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Page 33
At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs inform
him that his personal attention is required one morning for a state
trial, to be argued before the Emperor in person. Must the Emperor be
there? May he not waste the hours in the blandishments of lying
courtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a mistress? If he chooses thus
to postpone the audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his other
counsellors will obey. But the time will come when the worn-out boy will
be pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state. The
time comes one day. Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted by
some blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellors, and
bids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend to
these cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that moment that
we are to look upon him.
He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with
boyish debauchery; his young fore head worn with the premature sensual
wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night's intemperance.
He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, and
forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids them call in the
prisoner.
A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for years.
This soldier is a tried veteran of the Pr�torian cohorts. He was
selected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for that
purpose they have been inseparably bound. But, as he leads that other
through the hall, he looks at him with a regard and earnestness which
say he is no criminal to him. Long since, the criminal has been the
guardian of his keeper. Long since, the keeper has cared for the
prisoner with all the ardor of a new-found son's affection.
They lead that gray-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye he
glances keenly round the hall. That flashing eye has ere now bade
monarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall make
the world ring till the last moment of the world shall come. The stately
Eastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes a
subject's salutation to the Emperor-judge who is to hear him. And when,
then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see the
prophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old! You
see Paul make a subject's formal reverence to Nero![K]
Let me do justice to the court which is to try him. In that
judgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; we
have also the best of its wisdom. By the dissolute boy, Nero, there
stands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of his
time; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. We
will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage
had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world.
This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when
he could, and with his colleague had conducted the general
administration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy was
wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more
to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young
tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. Yet
Seneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman morality
and Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest
of the men of the old civilization. He is the type of their
excellences, as is Nero the model of their power and their adornments.
And yet all that Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce the
baby-tyrant into the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a
province he would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the
murder of a senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the
ruin of the Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruin
of a noble family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He said
he used all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one of
those men of whom all times have their share. The bravest of his time,
he satisfied himself with alluring the beardless Emperor by petty crime
from public wrong; he could flatter him to the expedient. He dared not
order him to the right.
But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trained
conscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca's brother,
Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would have dragged him
to pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that Seneca and Paul had
corresponded with each other before they stood together in Nero's
presence, the one as counsellor, the other as the criminal.[L] When Paul
arose from that formal salutation, when the apostle of the new
civilization spoke to the tottering monarch of the old, if there had
been one man in that assemblage, could he have failed to see that that
was a turning-point in the world's history? Before him in that little
hall, in that little hour, was passing the scene which for centuries
would be acted out upon the larger stage.
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