University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
THE TULLIANUM.

Hamlet.

Night was at hand.

The Roman Senate might not sit after the sun had set.

Although the Tribunes had failed, in the consternation
of the moment, to respond to the call of Cæsar, there was
no doubt, that, if one night should intervene, those miscalled
magistrates would check the course of justice.

Confined, apart one from the other, in free custody, the
traitors had not failed to learn all that was passing, almost
ere it passed.

Their hopes had been high, when the rabble were alert
and thundering at the prison gates—nor when the charge
of the knights had beaten back the multitude, did they despair;
for simultaneously with those evil tidings, they
learned the effect of Cæsar's speech; and shortly afterward
the news reached them that Cicero's reply had found
few willing auditors.

Confined, apart one from the other, they had eaten and
drunken, and their hearts were “jocund and sublime”;
the eloquence of Cæsar, the turbulence of the tribunes,
were their predominant ideas. Confined, apart one from
the other, one thought was common to them all,—immediate
liberation, speedy vengeance.

And, in truth, immediate was the liberation; speedy the
vengeance.

Night was at hand.

The Triumvirs, whose duty it was to superintend all
capital punishments—a thing almost unknown in Rome—
had been instructed to prepare whatever should be needful.

Lentulus sat alone in an inner chamber of the house of
Publius Lentulus Spintherus, an ædile at that time.
There was, it is true, a guard at the door, and clients under
arms in the atrium; but in his own apartment the proud
conspirator was still master of himself indeed, soon to be
master of Rome, in his own frantic fantasy.

Bright lights were burning in bronze candelabra; rich
wines were before him; his own favorite freedman leaned
on the back of his ivory arm chair, and jested lighly on the
discomfiture of noble Cicero, on the sure triumph of democratic
Cæsar.

“Fill up the glass again, my Phormio,” cried the exhilarated
parricide; “this namesake of my own hath good
wine, at the least—we may not taste it again shortly—fill
up, I say; and do not spare to brim your own. What if
our boys were beaten in the streets to-day. Brave Cæsar
was not beaten in the Senate.”

“By Hercules! no!” cried the wily Greek, base inheritor
of a superb name—“and if he had been checked,
there are the tribunes.”

“But he was not checked, Phormio?” asked the conspirator
in evident anxiety.

“By your head, no! You shall yet be the THIRD Cornelius!”—

“Who shall rule Rome!”—

The door of the small room was suddenly thrown open,
and the tall form of Cicero stood in the shadow of the entrance.
The gleam of the lamps fell full on his white robes,
and glittered on his ivory sceptre; but behind him it
showed the grim dark features of the Capital Triumvirs,
and flickered on the axe-heads of the lictors.

The glass fell from the hand of Lentulus, the wine untasted;
and so deep was the silence of that awful moment,
that the gurgling of the liquor as it trickled from the shattered
fragments of the crystal goblet, was distinctly audible.

There was a silent pause—no word, no motion followed

the entrance of the Consul. Face to face, he stood with
the deadliest of his foes, Catiline absent. Face to face, he
stood with his overthrown and subdued enemy. And yet
on his broad tranquil brow there was no frown of hatred;
on his calm lip there there was no curl of gratified resentment,
of high triumph.

Raising his hand, with a slow but very solemn gesture,
he uttered in his deep harmonious accents, accents which
at that moment spoke in almost an unnatural cadence, this
one word—

“Come.”

And calm, and proud, as the Consul, the degraded Senator,
the fallen Consul replied, with a question,

“To death, Consul?”

“Come!”

“Give me my toga, Phormio.”

And robing himself, with an air as quiet and an expression
as unconcerned as if he had been setting forth to a
banquet, the proud Epicurean gazed with a calmer eye
upon the Consul, than that good man could fix upon his
victim.

“This signet to Sempronia—that sword to—no! no!—
this purse to thyself, Phormio! Consul, precede. I follow.”

And the step of the convicted Traitor, as he descended
from the portico of that mansion, for the last time, was
firmer, statelier, prouder, than that of his conductor.

The streets were thronged—the windows crowded—the
housetops heaped—with glaring mute spectators.

Some twenty knights, no more, unarmed, with the exception
of their swords, composed the Consul's escort.
Lentulus knew them, man by man, had drunk with them,
played with them, lent money to them, borrowed of them.

He looked upon them.

They were the handful leading him to death! What
made them break the ties which bound them to their brother
noble? What made them forget mutual pleasures enjoyed,
mutual perils incurred, mutual benefits accepted?

They were the nobles, true to their order.

He looked upon the thronged streets—upon the crowded
windows—upon the heaped housetops, he saw myriads,
myriads who had fed on his bounty, encouraged his infamy,

hoped from his atrocity, urged him to his crime, myriads
who now frowned upon him—cursed him—howled at
him—or—more cowardly—were silent. Myriads, who
might have saved him, and did not.

Wherefore?

They were the people, false to their leader.

He looked from the handful to the myriad—and shook
himself, as a lion in his wrath; and stamped the dust from
his sandals.

Cicero saw the movement, and read its meaning. He
met the glance, not humiliated, but prouder for the mob's
reprobation; and said, what he would not have said had
the glance been conscious—

“Thou seest!—Hearest!”

“The voice of the People!” answered the traitor with
a bitter sneer.

“The voice of God!” replied the Consul, looking upward.

“That voice of God shall shout for joy at thy head on
the rostrum! Such is the fate of all who would serve
the people!”

The eloquent tongue, stabbed with the harlot's bodkin,
the head and the hand, nailed on the beaked column in
after days, showed which best knew the people, their savior,
or their parricide.

There is a place in Rome—there is a place—reader,
thou mayest have seen it—on the right hand as thou goest
up the steps of the Asylum ascending from the forum to
the capitol.

“There is a place,” wrote Sallust, some nineteen hundred
years ago—“There is a place, within the prison,
which is called Tullianum, after you have ascended a little
way to the left, about twelve feet underground. It is built
strongly with walls on every side, and arched above with
a stone vaulting. But its aspect is foul and terrible from
neglect, darkness, and stench.”

It is there now—thou mayest have seen it, reader. Men
call it the Mamertine Prison. It was then called Tullianum,
because it was so antique at that time, that vague tradition
only told of its origin long centuries before, built by
the fabulous King Tullius.

The Tullianum—The Mamertine Prison.

The bath, which Jugurtha found very cold, when the
earrings had been torn from his bleeding ears, and, stript
of his last vestment, he was let down to die by the hangman's
noose.

The prison, in which, scarce one century later, Saint
Paul was held in durance, what time “Agrippa said unto
Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, had he
not appealed unto Cæsar.”

Unto Cæsar?

Cæsar the third Emperor, the third tyrant of the Roman
people.

Lentulus had appealed unto Cæsar, and was cast likewise
into the Tullianum.

The voice of the people, is the voice of God.

Whether of the twain slew Lentulus? whether of the
twain set free Paul, from the Tullianum?

In those days, there was a tall and massive structure
above that sordid and tremendous vault, on the right hand
as you go up towards the capitol.

The steps of the asylum were lined on either side by legionaries
in full armor; and as the Consul walked up
with his victim, side by side, each soldier faced about, and,
by a simple movement, doubling their files, occupied the
whole space of the steep ascent with a solid column; while
all the heights above, and the great capitol itself, bristled
with spears, and flashed with tawny light from the dense
ranks of brazen corslets.

The Capital Triumvirs received the Consul at the door;
and with his prisoner he passed inward.

It was in perfect keeping with the Roman character,
that a man, hopeless of success, should die without an effort;
and to the fullest, Lentulus acted out that character.

Impassive and unmoved, he went to his death. He disgraced
his evil life by no cowardice in death; by no fruitless
call upon the people for assistance, by no vain cry to
the nobles for mercy.

But it was the impassibility of the Epicurean, not of the
Stoic, that sustained him.

He went to die, like his brother democrats of France,
with the madness of Atheism in his heart, the mirth of Perdition
on his tongue.

They two, the Convict and the Consul, ascended a little,

two or three steps, to the left, and entered a large apartment,
paved, walled, and roofed with stone; but in the
centre of the floor there was a small round aperture.

There were a dozen persons in that guard-room, four
of whom were his fellow-traitors—Gabinius, Statilius, Cæ
parius, and Cethegus—two prætors, four legionaries, and
two Moorish slaves composed the group, until with the
Triumvirs, and his twelve lictors, Cicero entered.

“Ha! my Cæparius!” exclaimed Lentulus, who had
not seen him since the morning of his arrest. “We have
met again. But I slept my sleep out. Thou might'st as
well have slept too; for we are both met here”—

“To die! to die! Great Gods! to die!” cried Cæparius
utterly overcome, and almost fainting with despair.

“Great Gods indeed!” replied Lentulus with his accustomed
half-sardonic, half-indolent sneer. “They must be
great, indeed, to let such a puppet as that,” and he pointed
to Cicero, as he spoke, “do as he will with us. To
die! to die! Tush—what is that but to sleep? to sleep
without the trouble of awaking, or the annoyance of to-morrow?
What sayest thou, my Cethegus?”

“That thou art a sluggard, a fool, and a coward; curses!
curses! curses upon thee!” And he made an effort
to rush against his comrade, as if to strike him; and, when
the guards seized him and dragged him back, he shook
his fist at Cicero, and gnashed his teeth, and howling out,
“Thou too! thou too shalt die proscribed, and thy country's
foe!” by a sudden effort cast off the men who held
him, and crying, “Slaves and dastards, see how a Roman
noble dies,” rushed, with his head down, at the solid wall,
as a buffalo rushes blindly against an elephant.

He fell as if he were dead, the blood gushing from eyes,
nose, and mouth, and lay senseless.

Lentulus thought he was killed, gazed on him for a moment
tranquilly, and then said with a quiet laugh—

“He was a fool always—a rash fool!” Then turning
to Cicero, he added—“By Hercules! this is slow work.
I am exceeding hungry, and somewhat dry; and, as I
fancy I shall eat nothing more to-day, nor drink, I would
fain go to sleep.”

“Would'st thou drink, Lentulus?” asked one of the
Triumvirs.

“Would I not, had I wine?”

“Bring wine,” said the magistrate to one of the Moorish
slaves; who went out and returned in an instant with a
large brazen platter supporting several goblets.

Lentulus seized one quickly, and swallowed it at a
mouthful—there is a hot thirst in that last excitement—but
as the flavor reached his palate, when the roughness of the
harsh draught had passed away, he flung the cup down
scornfully and said,

“Finish it! Take this filthy taste from my lips! Let
me rest!”

And with the words, he advanced to the Moors who
stood beside the well-like aperture, and without a word
suffered them to place the rope under his arms, and lower
him into the pit.

Just as his head, however, was disappearing, he cast his
eyes upward, and met the earnest gaze of the Consul.

“The voice of the people! the man of the people!” he
cried sarcastically. “Fool! fool! they shall avenge me!
Think upon me near Formiæ!”

Was that spite, or a prophecy?

The eyes of the dying sometimes look far into futurity.

The haughty traitor was beyond the sight, before his
words had ceased to ring in the ears of the spectators.

There was a small low sound heard from below—not a
groan, not a struggle—but a rustle, a sob, a flutter—silence.

`So did[1] that Patrician, of the most noble house of the
Cornelii, who once held consular dominion in Rome, meet
his end, merited by his course of life, and his overt actions.'

Cethegus perished senseless, half dead by his own deed.

Cæparius died sullen; Gabinius weak and almost fainting;
Statilius struggling and howling. All by a hard and
slavish death, strangled by the base noose of a foreign
hangman.

An hour afterward, their corpses were hurled down the
Gemonian Stairs, among the shouts and acclamations of the
drunken slavish rabble.

An hour afterward, Cicero stood on the rostrum, near
the Libonian well—that rostrum whereon, at a later day

Lentulus' prophecy was fulfilled—and called out, in a
voice as solemn and almost as deep as thunder,

“They were!”

And the voice of the people yelled out its joy, because
they were no longer; and hailed their slayer the Savior
and Father of his country.

A few years afterward, how did they not hail Anthony?