The Blood of the Martyrs Read Online Free PDF Page B

last by his own scholarship, glowering and pouncing between here and Capri. And then when he died and young Gaius took over—Caligula theycalled him, remember, Crispus?—it seemed like the good old days. Yes, the exiles came back, there were free elections and free speech again; we thought Rome could be Rome … But it was hardly a year before the prosecutions and the tyranny came back; Gaius was as mad as Tiberius. The things we had to put through in the Senate! Enough to make one ashamed to bear one’s grandfather’s name. And then Gaius was murdered and the Divine Claudius came shambling and stammering on; but still, he was no tyrant. No, Gallio, he kept the Provinces together and he might have done well for Rome, but for trusting his wives and his freedmen. It didn’t send him mad, being Caesar, but whether Nero is going the same way as Tiberius and Gaius—what do you think, Gallio?’
    â€˜He’s not mad; he’s bad,’ Gallio answered. ‘It would take more than my poor brother and Burrus to hold a boy like that. He took after his mother. And she was a devil. But he only murdered her for a worse woman yet. Women and slaves!’
    â€˜But, oh dear, why must the gods treat us like this?’ said Crispus.
    â€˜Why? I’ll tell you. We’re to blame ourselves. Power’s a nasty, dangerous stuff, bad enough for a grown man. Poison to a boy. Even if Nero hadn’t had that mother. And we’ve been so afraid of civil war again—and the gods know we had reason to be afraid—that we let these Julio-Claudians have power. Tons of it. Enough to burst them, to send them mad. We gave it them with both hands—anything to keep us out of a civil war. We wouldn’t see that it was more than they could stand, any of them.’
    â€˜Augustus stood it.’
    â€˜He didn’t have it from childhood. And it wasn’t all in his hands, either. There was still a Senate and People of Rome with a will of its own that it could make known. And certain powers not given up. But now: think! We’ve given everything. Civil and military power. Judicial and executive. Haven’t we, Balbus?’
    â€˜It’s not possible to run an empire efficiently unless there’s power at the centre; what we complain about is its misuse. It keeps on getting into the wrong hands—creatures likePallas and Narcissus in the last reign—not even Italians!—and now men like Tigellinus and all those clever little snakes of freedmen, who can’t even get the whip marks off their backs, and women like Poppaea—the Divine Empress creeping from one bed to another—oh, it makes my blood boil!’
    Gallio laughed. ‘Drink and cool down. It’s our doing. Not that we could have helped it. Being what we are. And the world as it is. The people who want power are the ones who get it, and it’s not a thing that decent people want. You wouldn’t like to be Emperor, would you, Crispus?’
    â€˜The gods forbid!’
    â€˜Nor I. We’ve some regard for our souls. It’s the ones without souls—women and half-men like these Imperial Ganymedes, and brutes without education like our dear Tigellinus. They’re the kind that want power. And take it.’
    â€˜But the Emperors?’
    â€˜Can an Emperor have a soul? Ask my brother: Seneca’ll tell you fast enough! Poor little silly Imperial soul, smothered to death with flattery and luxury and pride and anger uncontrolled. No, you can’t have it both ways. Not power and a soul.’
    â€˜At any rate,’ said Crispus, ‘it isn’t so bad in the Provinces; they say that in Gaul, for instance, there is something nearer the old Roman life.’
    â€˜Comes of being a week’s journey from the capital. Gaul can’t be gathered up into the same bundle of power as Rome. But suppose now—well, I’m no poet, this is more my nephew’s line!—but