 | MYRTIS. Myrtis |  |
MYRTIS.
That hath lain bedded in the secret soul,
A treasure all undream'd of: as the night
Calls forth the harmonies of streams that roll
Unheard by day.”
Mrs. Hemans.
Twilight gathered heavily over the city of the
Cæsars. Lights began here and there to glimmer
from the patrician palaces, and along the banks of
the Tiber. Rome, which Augustus boasted to have
left built of marble, had lost none of its magnificence
under Adrian and the Antonines. Effeminacy
and corruption were sapping the foundations of the
empire, though the virtue of the last of the Antonines
still arrested or disguised the presages of its doom.
In the gorgeous apartment of a palace a woman
was seated, evidently of high rank, and surrounded
by the appliances of luxury. Her arm rested on a
small, oval table, richly inlaid with ivory and gold,
while her jeweled hand partly shaded her features,
as if to conceal some emotion, in which Roman pride
contended with woman's nature.
Her eye was intently fixed on a young man who
stood near her, arrayed as if for a journey. The
folds of the toga fell gracefully around his lofty form,
and his noble countenance was marked by thought
even to sadness. He appeared to wait her words,
which at length were slowly uttered.
“Go, then, my son, since the gods and the emperor
have thus willed it. Would that this trial might have
of thy departure hath come.”
The young Roman knelt at her feet, and pressed
her hands to his lips. His voice was scarcely audible
as he besought her blessing.
“The gods of thy fathers will not forget thee. My
vows shall keep thee ever in their mind. Already
have the salted cake, and a pure lamb crowned with
flowers, been offered, with costly libations, for thy
sake. I have vowed to Apollo a rich temple if thou
return in safety. Daily shall the Lares and Penates
be invoked for thy protection in a far clime.”
Then, determining not to weaken his purpose by
vain regrets, she arose, and threw all the strength of
a loving soul into the farewell smile. There was no
tear in her eye, and she trembled not at the last, long
embrace.
He departed. She listened to the echo of his footsteps,
and gazed to catch the last glimpse of him and
of his train. Then burst forth the sorrows of the
mother. She dismissed her attendants, that no eye
might witness her grief. Only the surrounding statues
beheld her with their marble brows. But the
frown of warriors or philosophers from their pedestals
reproved her in vain. She remembered only that
she was a mother, and desolate.
Day was high in the heavens ere she arose from
the couch, where, in the anguish of parting, she had
thrown herself, burying her face deep among the
pillows. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius was announced,
as one ashamed. Hastily she arranged her disordered
robes, and washed the traces of the burning
sorrow from cheek and brow.
Calm, serene, and like a habitant of a higher sphere,
Marcus Aurelius entered. That philosophic emperor,
who, according to the creed of the Stoics, was
never known to change countenance, either for grief
or joy, regarded her steadfastly, yet without reproach.
He saw how deeply flowed the inward tide of emotion,
and seemed to await its ebbing ere he spoke.
“Thy son hath gone forth on a noble mission, to
gain the wisdom and philosophy of Greece. He is
an honor to thee, and to the manes of his father.
Deeply wouldst thou hereafter have reproached thyself
hadst thou withheld him by the weakness of love
from this discipline, so essential to a finished education.
Had I not beheld in ælius Marcellus so much
of noble promise, I had not prompted him to the effort,
nor thee to this sacrifice.”
“Sire! emperor! Thou art ever good, and thy
wisdom shall be our guide. From earliest remembrance
thine affection was my chief treasure. In
widowhood, thou hast been a solace and protector;
to my only child, more than a father.”
Tender recollections stirred anew the fountain of
grief. Her compressed lips quivered, and she burst
into a passion of tears.
“Annia Cornificia, my sister, pray unto the gods.
Offer sacrifices for thine absent son; and for me
sweet fields of heaven-born philosophy, but to the
banks of the Danube, to quell an insurrection of the
barbarians. Rest and contemplation are most sweet;
yet I shrink not from privation or peril. Comfort
Faustina in my absence, and throw the mantle of thy
tender virtues over the boy Commodus. Let thy
wounded, maternal love expand itself on him. So
shall it find healing, and bear fruit worthy of the
gods.”
The ardent woman felt the channel of her grief
divided. The all-absorbing image of her absent and
only child faded for a time in sympathy for her imperial
brother, and she fondly expressed her apprehensions
for his safety.
“The life of man,” he said, “is but a vapor. What
folly to seek to preserve that, and neglect those duties
in which alone is its happiness. If I return no
more, my sister, shed not such passionate tears for
me as thou hast shed at the parting of thy son; for
when this little voyage is over, and we reach the
shore, shall we not get calmly out of the ship into
another life? Are not the gods there?” His voice
deepened as he added:
“Annia Cornificia, my sister, if it be my lot to die
among the barbarians, I commend unto thee the
Prince Commodus. Remind him of what he owes
to the people of Rome, and to the memory of his
father. Teach him that he who restrains not his own
passions can never rule a realm justly or with prosperity.
with him, that through his example the follies that I
fear may be repressed.”
The imperial father, who seemed to have before
his eyes some prophetic vision of the turpitude of his
successor, listened with complacency to the promises
of his sister, that his wishes should be held sacred;
and, taking an affectionate leave, soon departed with
his legions to subdue the rebellious tribes of the Quadi
and Marcomani.
Among the tributaries to Roman power, Greece
stood like a temple, dismantled, yet beautiful. The
wrath of conquest had crushed some of its fairest
columns, and stripped the acanthus leaf from their
capitals. Yet the divinity had not forsaken its shrine.
The whispers of an eloquent philosophy, to which
the world had knelt, still drew votaries from distant
climes, and the sons of her haughty victor came as
pilgrims to linger and to listen amid the groves of
the Academe.
At the period which we contemplate, Athens had
arisen from her deepest degradation. The intellectual
and magnificent Adrian had taken her by the
hand, and striven to efface the ravages of his predecessors.
Antoninus Pius and his successor sought
to restore her fallen dignity. Many of her desecrated
edifices had been rebuilt, and her privileges restored.
Still the footstep of the Roman made but harsh
echo among her shades. Though reinstated in her
shuddering heart. On the hope held before her, she
gazed like the pale planet, drooping from the recent
deluge, remembering rather the bitterness of the waters,
than the promise on the prismed cloud, that she
should be submerged no more.
Yet it was not held a slight honor in Athens, that
among the noble youths whom the study of arts and
letters attracted to her clime, should be the favored
relative, perhaps the presumptive heir of him, who
wore the imperial purple. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,
whose own intense love of philosophy had
been imbibed from the Greek sages who instructed
his youth, had decided that the mind of his nephew
should be enriched by the same lore, gathered in its
own native soil; and overruled, as we have already
seen, the reluctance of his solitary sister to the consequent
separation.
The virtues and accomplishments of ælius Marcellus
fully justified the affection of his mother, and
the earnest cares of the emperor, who, disgusted with
the vices of his colleague Lucius Verus, and inly
shuddering at the developments of his son Commodus,
perhaps coupled with the training of his nephew,
the future prosperity of the realm.
It was an autumnal evening when the young and
noble traveler first entered Athens. A liquid moonlight
bathed her towers, and heightened, like the silver
veil of the bride, the beauty of her sculpture.
But the proud and enthusiastic stranger contemplated
He turned dissatisfied even from the Acropolis and
the Parthenon, with their coronet of moonbeams, and
sought some counterpart for the Coliseum, some substitute
for those ranges of patrician structures which
clothed with gorgeousness the eternal city. Patriotism
swelled his bosom, while his thoughts recurred
to Rome, portraying her as she lay that night in
queenly repose, conscious that at her wakening the
world would be at her feet.
Such were his feelings as he looked on Athens in
the garb of Autumn; yet the young vernal moon
had scarcely filled her horn ere a change stole over
his spirit. No longer he trod those streets with the
haughty consciousness of being one of the masters
of the world. The solemn beauty of fallen Greece,
the antiquity of her lore, softened and subdued him.
Yielding to the enchantment of her eloquence who
breathed her antique history on the harp, he made
the pages of Herodotus the companion of his pillow,
or inhaled, amid the murmurings of Hissus, the sweetness
of the Doric muse.
But most, the enthusiasm of philosophy stole into
and ruled his soul. He communed with the shade
of Plato, as with a visible friend, in those gardens
where his voice still lingered, an imprisoned melody.
The sculpture which he had once passed with
indifference, now stood forth in severe sublimity, the
sad and silent statues seemed to beckon and commune
with him, till he felt that it was better to sigh
breathed on him like magic, enkindling a new
existence.
Yet was it not solely the scenery of Greece, nor
the exquisite symmetry of her architecture, nor the
charm of her language, nor the ideal presence of her
sages, that enchained the heart of the young Roman.
The touch of pity and the breathings of philosophy
prepared it for another guest. Love had been to it
like the angel at the Pool of Bethesda, and its troubled
fountains were gushing upward with strange untasted
streams. His favorite instructor in philosophy
was Demetrius, a follower of Plato. He possessed
a serene, contemplative character, and an innate
eloquence, which delighted the intellectual and
ardent disciple. The liberality of the Antonines had
placed the teachers of philosophy beyond the reach
of want. Their restricted finances no longer justified
the caustic reply of Diogenes to the question
“why philosophers followed rich men, and not rich
men philosophers?”—“because one know what they
have need of, and the others do not.”
The house of Demetrius was adorned with taste,
and ælius Marcellus was there a distinguished guest.
He was pleased to study the manners of the sage in
his own home, and to perceive how beautifully they
confirmed the theory of their common master, that
“happiness is the fruit of virtue.” He could not but
remark how the spirit of Attic grace modified even
the most common household utensils. The lamps,
The very slave, who bore on his head a basket
of grapes, the young female, who presented the
ewer of water for ablution, gave the rudiment of
those attitudes which guided the chisel of Phidias.
Then the Roman learned that the nation which would
be perfect in the arts must take the graces home to
its hearth-stone, and make for them a place at its
board, an indwelling amid its domestic sanctities.
But the most exquisite specimen of grace in the
household of the philosopher was a maiden of the
noblest blood of Athens, who, by the affliction of orphanage,
had passed under his protection. She, with
an infant sister, had been bequeathed by their parents
to the charge of Demetrius, a distant relative, and a
friend in whom such high confidence was wisely reposed.
Over the fortune of the orphans, which was
considerable, he exercised a paternal care, and they
entwined around his aged heart like the ivy, covering
it with the fresh green of hope.
Myrtis was one of those beautiful creations which
fancy sometimes forms when her revery has been
among seraphs. Her sylph-like step, her smile, imparting
happiness, without seeming to expect it again,
her manner, gentle almost to pensiveness, finely accorded
with features formed on the most perfect
Grecian model, with a complexion transparent as
light, and eyes often downcast, but never raised, and
quickened by speech, without interesting or affecting
the beholder. Unoccupied with self, and ever seeking
gratitude to her protector by the most affectionate
deportment, by skill in the arrangement of his household,
and attention to the comfort of his guests.
But it was more particularly in intercourse with
her little sister, the sole surviving scion of their ancient
house, that the fullness of her soul was poured
forth. To enrich her unfolding mind with the treasures
of knowledge, to fashion her docile dispositions,
to supply to her the place of the mother who had died
at her birth, were the highest efforts and purest pleasures
of her existence. It was this sweet illustration
of the sisterly virtues, which, more than any symmetry
of form or feature, won the heart of the young noble.
He had, indeed, admired her exquisite beauty, but
with such lineaments he had been familiar among
the patrician daughters of Rome. It was not till the
grace of a lovely and sublime spirit looked through
and gave life to it, that he felt it to be irresistible.
He saw her toiling with an earnest eye, to simplify
and adapt the precepts of wisdom to the comprehension
of a child of eight summers, or cheering her
to playfulness by merry music, or, with a mixture of
maternal pride, wreathing fresh vine-leaves among
her luxuriant, golden curls.
It was thus that ælius Marcellus, the favored relative
of an emperor, the unmoved idol of the more
ambitious beauties of Rome, became the willing captive
of an artless Athenian maiden. His letters to his
mother gradually assumed the coloring of the image
lectures of the philosophers, it suddenly diverged
to Myrtis; his praise of the perfect language of
Greece took the name of Myrtis as a key-tone; and
if he attempted a description of that architecture
which the world will never be too old to admire, it
was transformed into an encomium on Myrtis.
He was surprised at the ease with which his
thoughts arrayed themselves in a Grecian garb. Conversations
with Myrtis, in which he was as frequently
indulged as the somewhat reserved courtesies of
Athens admitted, untwisted the idiom of a foreign
dialect, and taught it to “run smoothly o'er the lip,”
as the accents which a mother softens for her babe.
And, apart from the necromancy of love, he who
would so conquer the difficulties of a new language
as to speak it with fluency and grace, should seek the
society of educated females, for with them is the colloquial
affluence of their mother tongue, and the clew
that most readily guides a stranger through its labyrinthine
refinements.
While ælius Marcellus was sounding the depths
of a passion which, as yet, his lips uttered not, she
who inspired it had not even advanced so far as to
assign its true name. All her life she had been
sighing for a brother. She supposed herself to have
found one. In the loneliness of early childhood,
and amid the sorrows of orphanage, she had painted
fraternal intercourse as the fullness of bliss. She
believed, in her crystal singleness of heart, that her
and rejoiced to see the little Alethea greet their
brother, at every interview, with the overflowing
warmth of an affectionate heart.
One evening, ælius Marcellus entered with a
troubled countenance. He had received tidings of
the dangerous, perhaps fatal, illness of his mother.
Tears started to the eyes of Myrtis. Memory turned
to the death-bed of her own parents, and her sympathies
were strongly moved. The young Roman added
that his immediate return was required, and that
the period of his absence from his studies in Athens
was uncertain, and might be protracted. Tears now
gushed from an unexplored source, and blushes of
a stronger tint than the maiden had yet known suffused
both cheek and brow at finding herself addressed
by a fonder name than that of sister, and feeling
that it awoke a true echo in her heart.
The discoveries of that parting hour were priceless
and indelible. Yet, to describe love-scenes is
but a losing office. He who attempts it is unwise;
for the dialect of love, counting speech impotent, is
especially ill represented on paper; as if it were possible
that light, in its most subtle transmission, should
borrow, or bow to the stammerings of sound. Love,
scorning so slow a medium as language, except the
eye be interpreter, is indignant at the tardier ministry
of the pen. The words of lovers dilated upon
the dead page, are, like the shorn locks of Samson,
stripped of their talisman and scattered to the winds.
Yet, in the few tones of that Athenian maiden,
when her heart first awoke to self-knowledge and to
reciprocity, there was a treasure which her lover felt
the world were poor to purchase. It was with him
on his journeyings as a spell, annihilating distance and
neutralizing fatigue. He best loved the lonely valleys,
where he might repeat its sweetness unheard,
and the hermit cell by night, that he might invoke it
as the tutelary goddess of his repose.
He arrived at the eternal city like one traveling
on the wing of dreams. His mother, the noble An-nia
Cornificia, lay in the last stages of a fatal disease.
She had caused it to be concealed from her son as
long as hope remained, and summoned him only to
receive her parting counsels and benedictions. Yet
the declining flame of life, revivifying and feeding on
the affections, lingered for a time on the verge of the
grave, cheered by the kind attentions and filial piety
of her earthly idol. He passed almost his whole
time by her bedside, striving to assuage her sufferings,
and receiving, when she was able, her directions
respecting the fortune which had been intrusted by
his father to her care. The emperor, whose presence
in her last extremity she greatly desired, was
still absent from Rome, engaged in the wars of Germany.
While these mournful duties occupied ælius Marcellus,
there remained with the bereaved Myrtis an
interminable void. He whom she had long loved as
a brother, and more than a brother, without being
to regard as the dearest of all earthly objects, seemed
to have taken away with him the life of life. Demetrius,
prizing him as a scholar and a friend, and
the affectionate Alethea were incessantly talking of
him; while she, whose heart was most interested,
seldom trusted to her voice the utterance of his name.
There was about his image a sacredness which she
reserved for the hours of solitary meditation, when
she might embalm it with such tears as do not cover
the face. Yet that chemistry in which the most perfectly
balanced minds are the best adepts, gradually
taught her that the duties of benevolence contain a
balm for sorrow. She sought out with increased
zeal the poor and afflicted, and, in distributing consolation,
derived comfort. Among her pensioners
was an aged man, who had held in her father's household
the rank of steward. His intelligence and fidelity
caused him to be considered by her parents less
as a servant than a friend, and his grateful attachment
was unbounded. He was now, in his childless
age, the inmate of a small tenement connected with
the garden of Demetrius, where it was convenient
for Myrtis daily to visit him, and cheer the languor
of his decline. Her attentions to this lonely and
worthy retainer now redoubled, as it became obvious
that his span of life rapidly decreased.
“Myrtis, I am not well pleased,” said the little
Alethea, “that you sometimes go to see poor Proclus
without me, and that you stay so long. I love him
wake at midnight and find you reading? and why do
you hide it so carefully away? Sister, sister, you
never used to have secrets from me. And now that
our brother is gone, you ought to be kinder to me
than ever, and not begin to shut me out of your
heart.”
Myrtis hasted to reassure the little trusting being,
reproaching herself that she should thus have grieved
her, for she found that in her dreams she sometimes
convulsively sobbed out complaints mingled with the
name of Proclus.
One morning the sound of heavy steps was heard
advancing toward the inner apartment, and Demetrius
entered, with more of agitation than his calm
philosophy, and his still calmer nature, were wont to
indulge. Following him was the proconsul of Athens,
to whom he said, in hurried tones,
“Will there never be an end of slanders? Behold
the noble maiden, whom you so unjustly suspect. Is
it necessary that here, in the very home of her protector,
she be insulted by the question, whether she
be a Christian?”
“There needs not this clamor,” replied the proconsul.
“It is sufficient if the lady simply indicate
whether she will sacrifice to the gods.”
“What an indignity is this doubt of her piety!
Think you she could be thus faithless to her long
line of ancestors, to her teachers—to herself? Instructed
in our most ancient rites, would it be possible
Myrtis, daughter, will it please you by a
single word to dismiss the proconsul?”
Thus invoked, the maiden arose. Her slight, but
perfect, figure seemed to assume new height and
majesty. There was no fading of lip or cheek, as
she firmly pronounced, “I am a Christian.”
The philosopher stood as if the blast of Heaven
had dried up his spirits. He listened, gasping, for
some recantation. He feared to speak, lest there
might be a repetition of those fearful words.
At length, overcome with agony, he fell prostrate
and powerless, and the proconsul, with a glance of
triumph and of scorn, departed. Newly clothed with
deputed authority, he was eager to turn it to the best
advantage. The single prominent blemish in the
character of Marcus Aurelius was severity to the
Christians. Mild and forbearing to all besides, he
seemed to concentrate the whole bitterness of the
Portico to pour it upon the Cross. The governors
of the subjugated provinces found the most direct
road to his favor lay through the persecution and
punishment of that sect which was “every where
spoken against.” This new proconsul, a bold man
and a bad, was neither insensible to such ambition,
nor averse from the machinery which it involved.
Our next scene is in the prison at Athens. It was
thronged with habitants. In one of its cells was
a fair young creature, and a child ever near her
— inseparable as the shadow from the substance.
whose “beard descending, swept his aged breast.”
He came with early morn, and late departed. Incessantly
he argued of the antiquity and omnipotence
of the gods of Greece, and condemned the madness
of those who followed the Crucified. But the beautiful
being whom he addressed spake with a gentle,
yet clear voice of the hope that was in her, or read
to him from a hallowed page in which was the reason
of that hope; and every evening he bade farewell
with a paler and more troubled brow.
One day he announced to her that he had obtained
permission, though not without difficulty, that she
should visit the cell of Proclus; for age and sickness
had been no protection against his being torn from
his humble home, and subjected to the rigors of imprisonment.
Breathing gratitude for a liberty so
long sought in vain, she took the hand of Alethea,
and followed Demetrius and the guard who accompanied
him.
The old man lay on a little straw in the corner of
his narrow cell. His eye, dim with the gloom of the
prison, and with a deeper darkness which had begun
to settle upon it, saw not who approached him. But
those sweet, low tones that he loved called back the
life-tide to his marble features.
“Art thou here, Angel of Mercy? Once more, art
thou by the side of the poor old man, thou who art
so soon to be an angel indeed? Often, since I have
lain here, have I wept to think that in the beauty and
of earth. I ought to have remembered, and given
thanks as I now do, for the portion that awaits thee,
for the `blessing, and the glory, and the honor, and
the eternal life.”'
“Bless me also, good Proclus,” said Alethea. “I
too am standing by thy bed. I read in the book of
the true God with Myrtis, and she teaches me to
worship him.”
“Ah! art thou here, youngest scion of my master's
house? What a doom for thee, thou lamb reared
in green pastures, beside the still waters! I pray
thee come nearer, that I may lay my hand on thy
head, and name over thee the name of Jesus. Who
will raise this dead hand for me, and place it among
the curls of that beautiful one whose welcome to this
sad life was the bosom of a dying mother?”
“Blessed saint,” said Myrtis, “from whom I first
heard the hope of immortality, how can I comfort thy
soul in its passage? Shall I read for thee from the
book of our faith, or sing a hymn to the Redeemer?”
“Fain would I listen to thy voice,” said the dying
man, “for it is melody. But now I may not stay.
They call me. My soul exults. I come. Is there
yet one drop of water, sweet one? The last want of
this poor clay. Moisten my parched lips, that I may
go with singing unto Him who loved me, who gave
himself for me.”
And, with a faintly warbled strain of praise, the
soul of that old man went upward.
The mind of Myrtis was prepared by its own structure,
as well as by its high culture, for a more consistent
belief than the mythology of her country afforded.
The very philosophy by which it had been refined
taught it to seek for some more stable foundation.
Her simple and severe rectitude was confused by the
countless deities naturalized at Athens, where it was
said to have been “easier to find a god than a man.”
Her purity revolted from the rites of “gods, partial,
changeful, passionate, unjust, whose attributes were
rage, revenge, or lust.” Plato led her to the gate
of truth, and taught her to breathe the pure atmosphere
that surrounded it; a humbler hand was appointed
to open that gate for her, and light and radiance
flowed through its portals, and she became a
faithful worshiper.
By the bedside of the lonely retainer of her family,
where she went in the ministry of her single-hearted
benevolence, she was first initiated into the rudiments
of Christianity, and gained a gift of inestimable
value—a copy of the Sacred Scriptures. This
was her daily study. The faith derived from it she
received in humility, and was ready to maintain with
fortitude. Yet martyrdom, which holy men counted
as a crown, and enthusiastic devotion sometimes too
eagerly coveted, was not, to her gentle spirit, an object
of ambition. To renounce life just as a newly-admitted
love had given it the coloring of Eden, could
not be desired. Her young heart, won by the noble
Marcellus; his heart, beating, as it were, in her bosom;
world and the next; and her constant supplication,
amid her prison solitude, was, that her Father in
heaven would reveal her duty, and gird her to unswerving
obedience.
Once, while the philosopher sat gazing in silent
affliction upon the sisters, the massy bolts of the prison
were suddenly withdrawn, and ælius Marcellus entered.
Astonishment, dismay, and indignation convulsed
his noble features for a moment; but love, like
the lightning flash, dispersed all their cloudy symbols.
Myrtis vainly strove to give utterance to the
emotions that oppressed her. Sensation forsook her,
and her brow, paler than marble, drooped over her
lover's shoulder. But the deadly faintness was short.
The long fringes of her dark eyes unclosed, and a
tint, like the young rose-leaf, started to her cheek,
still deepening and spreading, till the very snows of
her temples caught its trembling suffusion. Then,
in tones like the varied melody of a fresh-tuned lute,
she hastened to relieve his anxiety, whose breath
seemed to depend upon her own, and to cheer the
bewildered spirits of her sister and their foster-father.
Supported by ælius Marcellus, and with Alethea
seated at her feet, a conversation of the deepest interest
commenced.
The philosopher felt the kindlings of a hope to
which he had been long a stranger. The agitation
of Myrtis, who, amid all other remonstrances, had
remained serene and passionless, proved to him the
of the cell, he enveloped his head in his garment, and
prepared, by an elaborate orison to Minerva, to accelerate
the victory which he predicted. Notwithstanding
the fervor of his devotions, the accents of
the speakers sometimes arrested his attention or lingered
upon his ear. The tones of the Roman were,
at first, as one who complains, or, perhaps, contends,
but with the consciousness of wearing invincible armor.
The response was tender and subdued, yet
musical as the wind-harp swept by the “sweet south-west.”
Then there was a tide of manly eloquence,
rushing like a river which surmounts every barrier
when the spring rains have swollen it. “For my
sake—for my sake,” seemed the burden of every argument,
and it was echoed in the sobbing of a child,
“for my sake, too, dearest sister.” Demetrius blessed
the youth in his aged heart, and began a prayer
of thanksgiving to Pallas, with vows of a costly libation.
At length the Roman was silent, and, supposing
him to have destroyed the last defenses of that
stubborn faith which all the weapons of philosophy
had assailed in vain, he removed the robe from his
face, and looked up.
But the evidence of the eye overthrew the exultation
which the more obtuse ear had fostered. She,
whom he had so long pictured to himself as the listener,
convinced, confuted, repentant, was speaking
with an upraised, soul-lighted eye. He knew that it
was not of earth that she spoke; for such holiness as
countenance. Her hand rested upon the open page
of a book which she had drawn from her bosom.
Every trace of earthly passion had faded from her
features, and her whole soul seemed to pour itself
forth as an essence of truth and power, and such love
as hath root fast by the throne of God.
The young Roman leaned his head upon his hands,
with every lineament of entranced attention. Deep
sighs burst from his bosom, like the dividing of the
soul from its terrestrial companionship. The maiden,
bending tenderly toward him, pointed on the page
which she held, to the words, “I am the resurrection
and the life.” He covered his eyes with his hands,
but tears gushed through his fingers like those large
rain-drops that herald the tempest. Starting from
his seat, he strained her in one short, agonized embrace,
and rushed from the cell. The philosopher
hastened after him, amazed at such abruptness, yet
dreading to decipher the cause.
“Sister, dear sister,” said Alethea, clinging round
the neck of Myrtis, “ælius Marcellus will return no
more. I know it. His heart is broken. But I will
never leave you. No; we will die together;” and
she sobbed out her deep love as the nursling pours
its griefs into a mother's bosom.
“Alethea, beloved one, go forth and breathe the
fresh air. A prison cell suits ill with the free spirit
of childhood. The flush is fading from your cheek,
and your fair flesh wastes away;” and she folded the
dove-like child in her arms.
“Myrtis, I do not wish to go. The gardens are
changed. Your voice is no longer there. The turf
is neither green nor beautiful. The oleanders do
not look as they once did, and my white cyclamen
has a tear in its eye as it puts forth its feeble buds.”
“Little Alethea, Demetrius will lead you to see
how our birds fare, and our bees. You shall bring
me word again. The comfort of the humblest insect
that God has made should be dear to us. In
the health and industry of those innocent creatures
you shall once more be glad. I will leave them to
your care, and my amaranths.”
The fair child kneeled by her sister, and hid her
face in her lap. She was silent for a few minutes.
Then, raising her head, she said, calmly and solemnly,
“Speak no more to me of the charge of birds, and
bees, and flowers. I shall die with you. Never
more will I press you to live, and cease to be a
Christian; for now I know that it gives you pain.
I love the same Jesus Christ that you love. Tell me
more of Him, that I may love Him better. Then,
when I stand up to die with you, I shall wear the
same smile that makes your brow like the angels',
when you kneel and pray for me.”
It has been mentioned that the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius was engaged in wars with the Quadi and
Marcomani. They involved a long absence from
Rome, and many hardships. The barbarians succeeded
in shutting him up between the mountains
and themselves. The heat of summer, the privations
thirst, annoyed and discouraged his army. Forced,
under these adverse circumstances, to meet the enemy,
the Roman cohorts might have whitened with
their bones the wilds of Germany, and scarce a survivor
have escaped to tell their fate. They invoked
the gods of their nation, and the boasted idols of
Egypt, in vain. At length a legion of Christian soldiers
knelt on the arid battle field, and besought help
of Jehovah. A plentiful and blessed rain, which fell
as the conflict began, and which the famishing soldiers
caught in their helmets and the hollow of their shields,
so invigorated them, while the tempest, with thunder
and lightning that followed, so terrified the barbarians,
that victory declared for those who, but a moment
before, seemed ready to yield without a struggle.
Even pagan history scruples not to connect this
wonderful event with the prevalent prayers of those
Christian soldiers, enforced, as they were, to follow the
fortunes and share in the battles of a persecuting emperor.
She bestowed on them the distinctive name
of the “thundering legion;” thus perpetuating at
once her gratitude, and the terrible voice from Heaven
that discomfited the barbarians. They were permitted
to have a thunderbolt engraven on their shields
—a coat of arms of high and peculiar heraldry. The
beautiful Antonine column, boldly resisting the tyranny
of time, still preserves the scenery of that remarkable
occurrence, among other imperishable records
of Roman glory.
At evening the emperor sat in his tent, revolving
the wonderful deliverance of the day, and thanking
the gods to whose interposition he ascribed it. He
mused, also, upon the evils of war, which drew him
from his palace and his people, to do deeds from
which his better nature revolted, and to forego that
philosophical retirement which declining years rendered
still more dear. The revery was disturbed by
tidings that a young Roman, apparently charged with
urgent dispatches, claimed admission to the imperial
presence.
The next moment ælius Marcellus was at his feet.
After salutations of surprise and reverence, he received
permission to unfold the cause for which he
had thus dared long travel, and an enemy's land. As
he proceeded, the brow of the emperor grew stern,
and darkened.
“Would that thy first mediation had not been for
one of that race, whom duty to the gods requires me
to humble, perhaps to extirpate. A Christian maiden!
What has she to do with the son of the noble
Marcellus, the nephew, perhaps the heir, of him who
wears the imperial purple?”
Again he listened to the suppliant, till his lofty forehead
lost its painful contraction, and his classic features
resumed their native cast of contemplative thought.
“The Christians have ever been represented to
me as disaffected to our laws, and leaders of tumult
and rebellion. Yet I am not ignorant that there are
in my army some of their soldiers who have done
upon the field of battle, and prayed their God for
succor, and lo! the elements came to our rescue,
and Heaven's thunder-bolts discomfited the barbarians.
My heart even now swells with gratitude to
them. Thou knowest that I seek to show justice to
all men. What is thy petition?”
“A mandate to the proconsul of Athens, overruling
this doom of death, which he purposes to inflict.”
“By my decree have the governors of the provinces
punished the Christians. How shall this discrepancy
be reconciled?”
“Thy noble and just nature has been deceived by
the falsehood of those who hold the Christians in abhorrence,
or by their avarice coveting the gains of
confiscation. If they have now proved themselves
faithful in camps, and brave amid the disasters of
war; if, through their prayers, the legions have been
rescued, an emperor, so generous to foes, will not
surely withhold from his own soldiers the approval
due to them and honorable to himself.”
Marcus Aurelius paced the tent in silence and agitation.
Then, fixing on his nephew eyes that seemed
to read the soul, he said, “Art thou a Christian?”
Color rushed to the brow of the young man, as he
half indignantly replied,
“No, I have never abjured the gods of Rome.
At my last interview with her for whose sake I thus
venture to implore thee, I sought vehemently to draw
her from what I deemed delusion and madness. But
must perish, trample, I pray thee, on my life as a
rootless weed, for henceforth I am nothing to Rome
or to thee.”
The emperor, still hesitating, murmured, half audibly,
half in self-communion,
“Did I not sanction the doom of Polycarp, and of
Dionysius, and of the multitudes whose blood saturated
the valleys of Gaul?”
Marcellus, pressing his hand in both his own, exclaimed,
“If an old man, weary of life, took only one step
toward his grave; if an enthusiast, greeting martyrdom
as the crown of earthly glory, eagerly seized
that crown; if those who were represented to thee
as ripe for insurrection, and subverters of the gods
of our nation, have shed their blood; what then?
canst thou restore them? But a maiden, nurtured in
simplicity and in philosophy, no troubler of thy realm,
no sower of sedition, must she be sacrificed because
she hath drawn secretly into her bosom some form of
faith which, to her purity, seems more pure? Have
I said that she is the daughter of one who was honored
as the munificent patron of philosophers—the
friend of Rome? Have I said that insolence dared
even to outrage the domestic sanctuary, and drive her
thence in her beauty and innocence to such a prison
as felons share? Let her look, in her desolate orphanage,
to thee as her protector from such tyranny.”
The emperor regarded him, as he ceased to speak,
haggard eye, and the marks of rugged travel that
he bore. The sympathies of kindred blood wrought
strongly within him.
“My son, since last we met, the soul of thy mother
hath been summoned to the eternal gods. She
was my only sister, dear to me from the cradle. Her
love shall be thine. Even now her voice pleads within
my heart for thee. Not in vain shall be thy perilous
appeal for this Grecian maiden.”
He traced a few lines, and gave them folded into
the hand of the youth.
“This will suspend all execution of Christians, on
account of their faith, until my arrival in Athens, for
I purpose to visit that illustrious city ere I return to
Rome.”
“Emperor! father! yet more to me than either
father or emperor! Representative of the mercy of
the heavens! how shall I give vent to my eternal
gratitude?”
“Go to thy rest, my son, for thou art sore wearied.
In the morning I will confer with thee of the philoophy
of Greece. It will refresh my spirit under the
toils and burdens of this war.”
“Forgive me,” said the youth, embracing his
knees. “I may not tarry for a night. Sleep is a
stranger to mine eyelids. Even the moment in which
I so vainly strive to utter thanks, may frustrate the
very purpose of thy goodness.”
The lips of the emperor trembled. Scarcely had
thee,” ere the flying tramp of a departing steed was
heard, though the storm still raged, and the darkness
of midnight overspread the landscape.
The summer sun lay bright and broad upon Athens.
Footsteps hurried through the streets, and the
low murmur of suppressed voices was heard from a
spot where the dense throng congregated. Preparations
were seen for the extinction of life. The fatal
pile, rising here and there, bore witness that this extinction
was to be through the torturing agency of
fire. Individuals of various ages composed the band
who were sentenced to look that day for the last time
on the waving olives and fair skies of their beautiful
clime. There the hoary-headed man came to give the
remnant of his life joyfully away, and the delicate female,
made strong by the faith of her Redeemer, stood
forth a spectacle to men and to angels. Amid all the
softening influences of nature and of art, the same spirit
was dominant which adjudged Socrates to the hemlock,
and it was enraged to find that neither threat nor
torture could intimidate those whom it had marked
for its prey. Still a semblance of justice and moderation
was preserved. Opportunity was offered to
each of the victims to sacrifice to the gods, arguments
to persuade recantation were adduced, and an
affected reluctance testified to inflict the doom which
multitudes had assembled to witness; but the alternative
was refused by every Christian, and death nobly
welcomed.
Then there was a moment of awful silence. It
was broken by sounds strangely sweet—the hymn of
the martrys. Its prelude was tender, almost tremulous,
as of souls spreading a timid wing over the
crushing of their clay casket, fragile, and beloved.
But then it swelled out in fuller chorus, as if angels
from the open gates of heaven took up the melody
and made it a song of triumph.
The listeners were appalled. Those who conducted
the execution, dreading a revulsion of popular
feeling, strove by the clamor of martial instruments
to interrupt that solemn, unearthly music.
Among the little band of martyrs was one on whom
the universal gaze settled. Youth, and a beauty rendered
more exquisite by seclusion from crowds, were
suddenly exposed to the rude glare of the multitude.
By the side of the maiden stood an ancient philosopher,
wasted to a skeleton, a mute effigy of powerless
sorrow. Clasping her hands was a fair child, whose
exuberant curls partially shaded a face ever raised
upward to the object of its love, as if from thence it
derived breath and being.
The time arrived when the victims must be bound
to the stake. Orders were given that the child should
be removed; but, embracing her sister with a convulsive
grasp, she declared her determination that
nothing should separate them. The martyr soothed
her in low tones, and strove gently to put her hand
into that of the philosopher; but in vain. She clung
to her as the clay to the struggling spirit when Death
through the populace. The proconsul approached.
“Maiden, art thou so rashly bent upon death, that
nothing can annul thy choice? Have all the joys of
life no weight with one so beautiful?”
“Speak not to me of the alternative by which life
is purchased. Am I again to repeat the assurance
that I will never deny my Savior?”
“Then bid farewell to this child. Or is it thy
pleasure that she make trial of the flame?”
The martyr bowed down and clasped her soul's
darling in one long embrace. She pressed her lips to
hers, as if she fain would breathe there her last breath.
As she withdrew them, she said gently, but firmly,
“Dearest, go now to our father Demetrius. If we
both leave him, he will die comfortless, he who has
for so many years been as father and mother to us.
Go, cheer his aged heart. This is your duty. Be
a daughter to him. Remember my last message to
your brother, to ælius Marcellus. And now, little
sister, farewell. We shall meet again. There is a
place for you in heaven. I will watch over you, and
welcome you there.”
Her words fell unheeded. The lips and forehead
of the child were cold, but the pressure of her embrace
relaxed not.
“Old man,” said the proconsul, “take away this
child.” But the hoary-headed philosopher moved
not. He stood as the statues that in their marble
majesty looked down upon him.
At a glance from the proconsul, a soldier laid his
hand upon Alethea. Even his iron nature recoiled
at her piercing scream.
“No, no! I shall die with my sister. I worship
the Christian's God. I love Jesus Christ. I hate
the idols of Athens. Let me stand up in the fire by
my dear sister's side. I will not shrink, nor cry out.
My heart grows to hers. It can not be torn away.
I have a right to die with her. Do I not tell you that
I am a Christian?”
“Away with her, then,” said the proconsul: “let
her test her young courage by a taste of the flame,
if so it pleaseth her.”
There was a tumult among the throng. A shout
of “Tidings from the emperor!” A horseman was
seen approaching with breathless speed. He leaped
from his gasping steed, which the same moment fell
dead at his feet. He caught in his arms the sentenced
maiden and the pale child, who adhered to
her with the clasp of the drowning when he sinks to
rise no more. Hurling toward the proconsul the
edict which he drew from his bosom, he exclaimed,
“Hence, persecutor! with thy minions. Thou
shalt answer this before the emperor. See that these
Christians, in whose tortures thou wert so ready to
exult, are sent peacefully to their own homes; and
let this multitude disperse.”
The proconsul read the writing, and quailed before
the wrath of the young Roman. He dared not meet
the lightning of his eye, for there is in every tyrant
who, but a moment before, condemned the Christians
to the stake, departed with curses on their lips
for the baffled proconsul.
The next gathering of a throng in that amphitheatre
was for a different purpose — the triumphal
entry of Marcus Aurelius into Athens. The car
of the emperor was attended by his conquering legions,
whose invincible might Greece well remembered,
and could too feelingly attest. Captives, torn
from the German wilds, with dejected countenances
and wild elf-locks, swelled the pageant of the victor.
He was welcomed by all that Athens could devise
of pomp or of music, of procession or of praise.
Flowers were strewn as he passed, and clouds of incense
ascended as to a god. Since the entrance of
Adrian, to whom the Eleusinian mysteries were revealed,
Athens had beheld nothing so imposing. She
hoped to receive from Marcus Aurelius such benefactions
as were then heaped upon her; and the
splendid edifices which Adrian had erected, especially
his library, with its alabaster roof and its hundred
columns of Phrygian marble, glowed with the richest
wreaths and echoed to the rarest minstrelsy.
But peculiarly did philosophy regard this festival
as her own. Never before had she seen one of her
own votaries robed in imperial purple, and wielding
the scepter of the globe. With all her boasted indifference
to earthly pomp and pride, she might have
been forgiven the quickened step and flushed brow
did the disciples of Zeno lift up their head
with unwonted dignity. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
was a brother of their order, an adept in their
lore. His constant favor had distinguished them, his
eloquent pen maintained their tenets. The point of
precedence was therefore, on that memorable day,
conceded to the scholars of the Portico; but pressing
near them, and with more of heart-felt joy in his
demeanor, was a Platonist, the silver-haired Demetrius.
Regarding the emperor as a beneficent deity,
he poured forth a tide of scarcely audible gratitude.
Yet he, to whom every eye was lifted, bent his own
with serene earnestness on a single group. There
knelt at his feet a lordly Roman, and a graceful female,
enveloped in a veil, to whose side clung a beautiful
child. The vast multitude listened in breathless
attention as the youth broke silence.
“Emperor! Sire! Behold the maiden for whom
I besought thee. Since we last met, a change hath
passed over me. I am no longer able to resist the
truth. I have embraced the faith that once I condemned.
I am a Christian. To whatever punishment
thou shalt adjudge, we submit ourselves. If
our doom be death, suffer us to share it together, that
together we may be with the Lord.”
He who was thus addressed, bending from his lofty
seat, united the hands of the lovers; and Marcus
Aurelius, the heathen and the Stoic, sanctioned, not
without a tear of tenderness, the bridal of Christians.
| MYRTIS. Myrtis | |