RHEA SILVIA A STORY FROM THE LIFE OF THE SIXTH CENTURY

I

MARIA was the daughter of Rufus the Scribe. She was not yet ten years old when on the 17th of December, 546, Rome was taken by Totila, the king of the Goths. The magnanimous victor ordered bugles to be blown all night, so that the Roman people might escape from their native town as soon as they realised the danger of remaining there. Totila knew the violence of his soldiers and he had no wish that all the population of the ancient capital of the world should perish by the swords of the Goths. So Rufus and his wife Florentia fled with their little daughter Maria. An enormous crowd of refugees from Rome left the city through the night by the Appian Way; hundreds of them falling exhausted on the road. The greater number, among whom were Rufus and his family, succeeded in getting as far as Bovillæ, where, however, very many were unable to find shelter. Many of them had to camp out in the open. Later on they were all scattered in various directions, seeking some place of refuge. Some went to the Campagna and were taken prisoners by the Goths, who were in possession there; some got as far as the sea and were even able to set out for Sicily. The rest either remained as beggars in the neighbourhood of Bovillæ or managed to get into Samnium.

Rufus had a friend living near Corbio. To this poor man, Anthony by name, who earned a living by rearing pigs on a small plot of land, Rufus brought his family. Anthony took the fugitives in and shared with them his scanty store. And while living in the swineherd’s wretched hut Rufus heard of all the misfortunes which came upon Rome. At one time Totila threatened to raze the Eternal City to its foundations and turn it into a place of pasture. But the Gothic king afterwards relented and contented himself by burning several districts of the town and pillaging all that still remained from the cupidity and violence of Alaric, Genseric and Ricimer. In the spring of 547 Totila left Rome, but he took off with him all the inhabitants who had remained in the city. For forty days the capital of the world stood empty: there was not a human being left in it, and along its streets wandered only frightened animals and wild beasts. Then, timidly, a few at a time, the Romans began to return to their city. And a little later Rome was occupied by Belisarius and was once more united to the dominions of the Eastern empire.

Then Rufus and his family returned to Rome. They sought out their little house on the Remuria, which by reason of its insignificance had been spared by the spoilers. Almost all the poor belongings of Rufus were found to be intact, including the library and its rolls of parchment, so precious to the scribe. It seemed as if it might be possible to forget all the misfortunes they had undergone, as in some oppressive dream, and to continue their former life. But very soon it became clear that such a hope was deceptive. The war was far from being at an end. Rome had to endure another siege by Totila when again the inhabitants died in hundreds from hunger and lack of water. Then when the Goths at length raised their unsuccessful siege, Belisarius also left Rome, and the city acknowledged the rule of the covetous Byzantine Konon, from whom the Romans fled as from an enemy. At a later period the Goths, taking advantage of treacherous sentries, occupied Rome for the second time. This time, however, Totila not only refrained from plundering the city, but he even strove to bring into it some kind of order, and he wished to restore the ruined buildings. At length, after the death of Totila, Rome was taken by Narses. This was in 552.

It would be difficult to show clearly how Rufus managed to live through these six calamitous years. In the time of war and siege no one had need of the art of a scribe. No one any longer gave Rufus an order for a transcription from the works of the ancient poets or the fathers of the Church. In the city there were no authorities to whom it might be necessary to address petitions of various kinds. There were not many people, money was very scarce and food supplies scarcer still. He had to make a living by any kind of accidental work, serving either Goths or Byzantines, not disdaining to be a stone-mason when the town walls were being repaired or to be a porter of baggage for the troops. And with all this the entire family often went hungry, not only for days, but for whole weeks. Wine was not to be thought of; the only drink was bad water from the cisterns or from the Tiber, for the aqueducts had been destroyed by the Goths. It was only possible to endure such privations by knowing that everybody without exception was subject to them. The descendants of senators and patricians, the children of the richest and most illustrious families would ask on the streets for a piece of bread, as beggars. Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus and widow of Boethius, held out her hand for alms.

It was not to be wondered at that during these years the little Maria was left very much to her own devices. In her early childhood her father had taught her to read both Greek and Latin. But after their return to Rome he had no time to occupy himself further with her education. For whole days together she would do just what she thought she would. Her mother did not require her help in housekeeping, for there was hardly any housekeeping to be done. In order to pass the time Maria used to read the books which were still preserved in the house as there was no one who would buy them. But more often she would go out of the house and wander like a little wild animal about the deserted streets, forums and squares, much too broad for the now insignificant populace. The few passers-by soon became accustomed to the black-eyed girl in ragged garments, who ran about everywhere like a mouse, and they paid no attention to her. Rome became, as it were, an immense home for Maria. She knew it better than any writer who had described its noteworthy treasures of old time. Day after day she would go out into the immense area of the city, where over a million people had once dwelt, and she would learn to love some corners of it and detest others. And it was often not until late evening that she would return to her father’s cheerless roof, where it often happened that she would go supperless to bed, after a whole day spent on her feet.

In her wanderings through the town Maria would visit the most remote districts on either side of the Tiber, where there were empty partly burnt down houses, and there she would dream of the greatness of Rome in the past. She would examine the few statues which still remained whole in the squares—the immense bull on the Bull forum, the giant elephants in bronze on the Sacred Way, the statues of Domitian, Marcus Aurelius, and other famous men of ancient time, the columns, obelisks and bas-reliefs, striving to remember what she had read about them all, and if her knowledge was scanty, she would supplement it by any story she had read. She would go into the abandoned palaces of people who had once been rich, and admire the pitiful remains of former luxury in the decoration of the rooms, the mosaic of the floors, the various-coloured marble of the walls, the sumptuous tables, chairs, candlesticks, which in some places still remained. In this way she visited the ruined baths, which were like separate towns within the city, and were entirely deserted because there was no water to supply their insatiable pipes; in some of the buildings could still be seen magnificent marble reservoirs, mosaic floors, bathing chairs, baths of precious alabaster or porphyry, and in places some half-destroyed statues which had escaped being used by Goths and Byzantines as material for hurling at the enemy from the ballista. In the quietness of the enormous rooms Maria would hear echoes of the rich and careless lives of the thousands and thousands of people who had gathered there daily to meet friends, to discuss literature or philosophy, and to anoint their effeminate bodies before festival banquets. In the Grand Circus—which now looked like a wild ravine, for it was all overgrown with weeds and tall grasses—Maria thought of the triumphant horse-racing competitions, on which thousands of spectators had gazed and deafened the fortunate victors with a storm of applause. She could not but know of these festivals, for the last of them (oh! pitiful shadow of past splendour) had been arranged once more in her own lifetime by Totila during his second sovereignty in Rome. Sometimes Maria would simply walk along the Tiber bank, sit down in some comfortable spot under some half-ruined wall, and look at the yellow waters of the river, made famous by poets and artists, and in the quietness of the deserted place she would think and dream, and think and dream again.

She became accustomed to live in her dreams. The half-ruined, half-abandoned town fed her imagination generously. Everything she heard from her elders, everything she read in her disorderly fashion from her father’s books, mingled itself together in her brain into a strange, chaotic, but endlessly captivating representation of the great and ancient city. She was convinced that the former Rome had been in reality the concentration of all beauty, a marvellous town where all was enchantment, where all life had been one continuous festival. Centuries and epochs were confused in her poor little head, the times of Orestes seemed to her no further away than the rule of Trajan, and the reign of the wise Numa Pompilius as near as that of Odoacer. For her, antiquity comprised all that preceded the Goths; far away but still happy was the olden time, the rule of the great Theodoric; the new time began for her at her birth, at the time of the first siege of Rome, in the time of Belisarius. In antiquity everything seemed to Maria to be marvellous, beautiful, wonderful; in the olden time all was attractive and fortunate, in modern times everything was miserable and dreadful. And she tried not to notice the cruel reality of the present, but to live in her dreams in the antiquity which she loved, with her favourite heroes, among whom were the god Bacchus; Camillus, the second founder of the city; Caesar, who had been exalted up to the stars in the heavens; Diocletian, the wisest of all people, and Romulus Augustulus, the unhappiest of all the great. All these and many others whose names she had only heard by chance were the beloved of her reveries and the ordinary apparitions of her half-childish dreams.

Little by little in her dreams Maria created her own history of Rome, not at all like that which was told at one time by the eloquent Livy and afterwards by other historians and annalists. As she admired the statues which still remained whole and read their half-erased inscriptions, Maria interpreted everything in her own way and found everywhere corroboration of her own unrestrained imagination. She said to herself that such and such a statue represented the young Augustus, and nothing would then have convinced her that it was—a bad portrait of some half-barbarian who had lived only fifty years ago, and had forced some ignorant maker of tombs to immortalise his features in a piece of cheap marble. Or when she looked at a bas-relief depicting some scene from the Odyssey she would create from it a long story in which her beloved heroes would again figure—Mars, Brutus, or the emperor Honorius, and would soon be convinced that she had read this story in one of her father’s books. She would create legend after legend, myth after myth, and live in their world as one more real than the world of books, and still more real than the pitiful world which encompassed her.

After she had dreamed for a sufficiently long time, and when she felt tired out by walking and exhausted by hunger, Maria would return home. There her mother, who had become bad-tempered from the misfortunes she had endured, would meet her gloomily, roughly push towards her a piece of bread and a morsel of cheese, or a head of garlic if there happened to be one in the kitchen, adding occasionally some scolding words to the meagre supper. Maria, unsociable as a captive bird, would eat what was given her and then hasten away to her little room and its hard bed to dream again until she slept and then dream again in her sleep about the blessed, dazzling times of antiquity. On especially happy days, when her father happened to be at home and in a good temper, he would sometimes have a chat with Maria. And their talk would quickly turn to the ancient times, so dear to them both. Maria would question her father about bygone Rome, and then hold her breath while the old scribe, led away by his theme, would begin to talk of the great empire in the time of Theodosius, or recite verses from the ancient poets, Virgil, Ausonias and Claudian. And the chaos in her poor little head would fall into still greater confusion, and at times it would begin to seem to her that her actual life was only a dream, and that in reality she was living in the blessed times of Ennius Augustus or Gratian.

II

After the occupation of Rome by Narses, life in the city began to take more or less its ordinary course. The ruler established himself on the Palatine, some of the desolated rooms of the Imperial palace were renovated for him, and in the evenings they were lit up with lamps. The Byzantines had brought money with them, and trade in Rome began to revive. The main streets became comparatively safe and the impoverished inhabitants of the empty Campagna brought provisions into Rome to sell. Here and there wine taverns were reopened. There was even a demand for articles of luxury, which were purchased mainly by the frivolous women who, like a flock of ravens, followed the mongrel armies of the great eunuch. Monks went to and fro along all the streets, and from them also it was possible to make some sort of profit. The thirty or forty thousand inhabitants now gathered together in Rome, including the troops, gave to the city, especially in the central districts, the appearance of a populous and even of a lively place.

There was found at length some real work for Rufus. Narses, and afterwards his successor, the Byzantine general, received various complaints and petitions for the copying of which the art of a scribe was in request. The edicts of Justinian, acknowledging some of the acts of the Gothic kings and repudiating others, afforded pretext for endless chicanery and processes of law. Rufus sometimes had to copy papers addressed directly to His Holiness the Emperor in Byzantium, and for these he was comparatively well paid. And more important orders came to him. A new monastery wanted to have a written list of its service-books. A whimsical person ordered a copy of the poems of the famous Rutilius. In the house of Rufus there was once more a certain sufficiency. The family could have dinner every day and need no longer feel anxious about the morrow.

Everything might have been well in Rufus’ home if the scribe, who had aged greatly in consequence of years of deprivation, had not taken to drink. Oftentimes he left all his earnings in some tavern or other. This was a heavy blow for Florentia. She struggled in every way to combat the unhappy passion of her husband and tried to take from him all the money he earned, but Rufus descended to every sort of artifice and always found means of getting drunk. Maria, on the contrary, loved the days of her father’s drunken bouts. Then he would come home in a gay mood and pay no attention to the tears and reproaches of Florentia, but would eagerly call Maria to him, if she were at home, talk to her again endlessly about the old greatness of the Eternal City, and read to her verses from the old poets and those of his own composition. The half-witted girl and her drunken father somehow understood one another, and they often sat together till late in the night, after the angry Florentia had left them and gone to bed alone.

Maria herself did not change her way of life. In vain her father when sober forced her to help him in his work. In vain her mother was angry with her daughter for not sharing with her the cares of housekeeping. When Maria was obliged she would against her will sullenly transcribe a few lines or peel a few onions, but at the first opportunity she would run out of the house to wander all day again in her favourite corners of the city. She was scolded on her return, but she listened silently to all reproaches and made no reply. What mattered scoldings to her when in her vision there still glistened all the sumptuous pictures with which her imagination had been soothed while she had been hidden near a porphyry basin in the baths of Caracullus or had lain secreted in the thick grass on the banks of old Tiber. For the sake of not having her visions taken from her she would willingly have endured blows and every kind of torture. In these visions were all her life.

In the autumn of 554 Maria saw in the streets of Rome the triumphal procession of Narses—the last triumph celebrated in the Eternal City. The eunuch’s troops of many different races—among whom were Greeks, Huns, Heruli, Gepidæ, Persians—passed in an inharmonious crowd along the Sacred Way, bearing rich booty taken from the Goths. The soldiers sang gay songs in the most diverse languages and their voices mingled in wild and deafening cries. The general, crowned with laurel, drove in a chariot drawn by white horses. At the gates of Rome he was met by men dressed in white togas making themselves out to be senators. Narses went through half-demolished Rome, along streets in which the grass had grown up between the mighty paving-stones, in the direction of the Capitol. There he laid down his crown before a statue of Justinian, obtained from somewhere or other for this occasion. Then he went on foot through the town once more, going back to the Basilica of St. Peter, where he was met by the Pope and clergy in festival robes. The Roman people crowded into the streets and gazed at the spectacle without any special enthusiasm, though the chief actors had done their utmost to make it magnificent. The Byzantine triumph was for Romans something foreign, almost like a triumph of the enemies of their native land.

And on Maria the triumphal procession made no impression whatever. She looked with indifferent eyes upon the medley of colours in the soldiers’ garments, on the triumphal toga of the eunuch—a small, beardless old man with shifty eyes—and on the festal robes of the priests. The songs and martial cries of the soldiers only aroused her horror. It all seemed to her so different from the triumphs she had so often imagined in her lonely visions—the triumphs of Augustus Vespasian, Valentian! Here everything appeared to her to be strange and ugly; there, all had been magnificence and beauty! And without waiting to see the whole of the procession, Maria ran away from the basilica of St. Peter on to the Appian Way, to the ruined baths of Caracullus, which she loved, so that in the quietness of the marble hall she might weep freely over the irrevocable past and see it anew in her dreams, living and beautiful as it alone could be. Maria went home late that day and did not wish to answer any questions as to whether she had seen the procession.

At this time Maria was nearly eighteen. She was not beautiful. She was thin, her figure was undeveloped and with her wild black eyes and the hectic colour in her cheeks she rather affrighted than attracted attention. She had no friend. When the young girls of the neighbourhood spoke to her she answered abruptly and in monosyllables, and hastened to bring the conversation to an end. How could they—these other girls—understand her secret dreams, her sacred visions? Of what could she speak with them? She was thought not so much to be stupid as imbecile. And then, she never went to church. Sometimes, on the deserted streets a drunken passer-by would come up to her and try to take her arm or embrace her. Then Maria would turn on him like a wild cat, scratching, biting, hitting out with her fists, and she would be left in peace. One young man, however, the son of a neighbouring coppersmith, had wanted to pay attentions to her. When her mother spoke to her about him Maria heard the news with unfeigned horror. When her mother became insistent, saying that she could not now find a better husband anywhere Maria began to sob in such desperation that Florentia left her alone, making up her mind that her daughter was either too young to be married or that she was indeed not quite in her right mind. So Maria was allowed to live in freedom and to fill up her endless leisure time as she pleased.

So passed days and weeks and months. Rufus worked and drank. Florentia busied herself over her housekeeping and scolded. Both thought themselves unhappy, and cursed their wretched fate. Maria alone was happy in the world of her fancies. She began to pay less and less attention to the hateful actuality of her surroundings. She went deeper and deeper into the kingdom of her visions. She already held conversations with the forms which her imagination created as with living people. She used to return home with the conviction that to-day she had met the goddess Vesta or the dictator Sulla. She would remember the things she had imagined as if they had actually taken place. When she talked with her father at nights she would tell him all her remembrances, and the old Rufus would not be amazed. Every story of hers gave him a pretext for being ready with some lines of poetry—he would complete and develop the insane fancies of his daughter, and as she listened sleepily to their strange conversations Florentia would sometimes spit and pronounce a curse, sometimes cross herself and whisper a prayer to the Holy Virgin.

III

In the spring following the triumphal procession of Narses Maria was one day wandering near the ruined walls of the baths of Trajan, when she noticed that in one place, where evidently the Esquiline Hill took its rise, there was a strange opening in the ground, like an entrance somewhere. The district was a deserted one; all around there were only deserted and uninhabited houses; the pavements were broken and the steep slope of the hill was overgrown with tall grass. After some effort Maria succeeded in getting to the opening. Beyond it was a dark and narrow passage. Without hesitation she crawled into it. She had to crawl for a long way in utter darkness and in a stifling atmosphere. At the end of the passage there was a sudden drop. When Maria’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she could distinguish by the faint light which came from the opening by which she had entered that in front of her was a spacious hall of some unknown palace. After a little reflection the girl considered that she would not be able to see it without a light. She went back cautiously, and all that day she wandered about, pondering on the matter. Rome seemed to her to be her own property, and she could not endure the idea that there was anything in the city about which she knew nothing.

The next day, having secured a home-made torch, Maria returned to the place. Not without some danger to herself she got down into the hall she had discovered and there lighted the torch. A stately chamber presented itself to her gaze. The lower half of the walls was of marble, and above it were painted marvellous pictures. Bronze statues stood in niches, amazing work, for the statues seemed to be living people. It was possible to distinguish that the floor, now covered with earth and rubbish, was of mosaic. After admiring this new spectacle, Maria was emboldened to go further. Through an immense door she passed into a whole labyrinth of passages and cross-passages leading her into a new hall, still more magnificent than the first. Further on was a long suite of rooms, decorated with marble and gold, with wall paintings and statuary; in many places there still remained valuable furniture and various domestic articles of fine workmanship. Spiders, lizards, sow-bugs ran all around; bats fluttered here and there; but Maria, enthralled by the unique spectacle, saw nothing of them. Before her was the life of ancient Rome, living, in all its fulness, discovered by her at last.

How long she enjoyed herself there on that first day of her discovery she did not know. She was overcome, either by her strong agitation or by the foul atmosphere. When she came to her senses again she was on the damp stone floor, and her torch was extinguished, having burnt itself out. In utter darkness she began gropingly to seek a way out. She wandered for a long time, for many hours, but only became confused in the countless passages and rooms. In the misty consciousness of the girl there was a glimmer of a notion that she was fated to die in this unknown palace, which was itself buried under the ground. Such an idea did not alarm Maria; on the contrary, it seemed to her both beautiful and desirable to end her life among the splendid remains of ancient life, in a marble hall, at the foot of a beautiful statue somewhere or other. She was only sorry for one thing—that darkness lay around her, and that she was not fated to see the beauty in the midst of which she was to die.... Suddenly a ray of light shone before her. Gathering up her strength, Maria went towards it. It was the light of the moon shining through an opening like that by which she had entered the palace. But this opening was in an entirely different hall. By great efforts, scrambling up by the projections of the walls Maria got out into the open air in an hour when the whole city was already asleep and the moon reigned in her full glory over the heaps of the half-ruined buildings. Keeping close by the walls, in order to attract no attention, Maria reached home almost dead from exhaustion. Her father was absent, he did not come home all that night, and her mother only uttered a few coarse outcries.

After this Maria began daily to visit the subterranean palace she had discovered. Little by little she learnt all its corridors and halls, so that she could wander about them in utter darkness without fear of losing her way again. She always carried with her, however, a little lamp or a resin torch, so that she could adequately enjoy the sumptuous decorations of the rooms. She learnt to know all about them. She knew the rooms which were covered with paintings and decorations in crimson, others where a yellow colour predominated, others which by the green of the paintings reminded her of fresh meadows or of a garden, others which were all white with ornamentations of black ebony: she knew all the wall paintings, some of which depicted scenes from the lives of gods and heroes, some showed the great battles of antiquity, some showed the portraits of great men, others the ridiculous adventures of fauns and cupids; she knew all the statues that were preserved in the palace, both bronze and marble, the small busts in the niches, the glorious piece of sculpture of entire figures of enormous size which represented three people, a man and two youths, who were encircled in the coils of a gigantic serpent and were vainly striving to free themselves from its fatal embrace.

But of all the decorations in the underground palace Maria specially loved one bas-relief. It represented a young girl, slim and graceful, resting in a deep sleep in a kind of cave; near her stood a youth in warlike armour, with a noble face of marvellous beauty; above them, and as it were in the clouds, was depicted a woven basket containing two young children, floating on a river. It seemed to Maria that the features of the young girl in the picture were like her own. She recognised herself in this slim sleeping princess, and for whole hours she would untiringly admire her, imagining herself in her place. At times Maria was ready to believe that some ancient artist had marvellously divined that at some time a young girl Maria would appear in the world, and that he had by anticipation, created her portrait in the bas-relief of the mysterious enchanted palace, which must have been preserved untouched under the earth for hundreds of years. The significance of the other figures in the bas-relief was not realised by her for a long while.

But one evening Maria happened once more to have a talk with her father, who had come home drunk and in a gay mood. They were alone, for Florentia, as usual, had left them to their foolish chattering and had gone to bed. Maria told her father of the underground palace she had discovered and of its treasures. The old Rufus listened to this story in the same way as he heard all the other fancies of his daughter. When she used to tell him that she had that day met Constantine the Great in the street and that he had graciously conversed with her, Rufus would not be surprised, but he would begin to talk about Constantine. And now, when Maria spoke to him of the treasures of the underground palace the old scribe at once talked about this palace.

“Yes, yes, little daughter,” said he. “Between the Palatine and the Esquiline, it really is there. It is the Golden House of the emperor Nero, the most beautiful palace ever built in Rome. Nero had not sufficient space for it and he set fire to Rome. Rome was burnt, and the emperor recited verses about the burning of Troy. And afterwards, on the space that had been cleared, he built his Golden House. Yes, yes, it was between the Palatine and the Esquiline; you’re right. There was nothing more beautiful in the city. But after Nero’s death other emperors destroyed the palace out of envy, and heaped earth upon it; it existed no longer. They built houses and baths on its site. But it was the most beautiful of all the palaces.”

Then, having become bolder, Maria told her father about her beloved bas-relief. And again the old scribe was not surprised. He at once explained to his daughter what the artist had wished to express—

“That, my daughter, is Rhea Silvia, the vestal virgin, daughter of King Numitor. But a youth—this god Mars, fell in love with the maiden and sought her out in the sacred cave. Twin sons were born to them, Romulus and Remus. Rhea Silvia was drowned in the Tiber, the infants were suckled by a wolf and they became the founders of the City. Yes, that is how it all was, my daughter.”

Rufus told Maria in detail the touching story of the guilty vestal Ilia, or Rhea Silvia, and he at once began to recite some lines from the “Metamorphoses” of the ancient Naso:

But Maria was not listening to her father, she was repeating quietly to herself:

“It is—Rhea Silvia! Rhea Silvia!”

IV

After that day Maria spent still more of her time looking at the wonderful bas-relief. She would take a scanty luncheon with her, as well as a torch, so that she might stay some hours longer in the underground palace, which she considered to be more her own home than her father’s house. She would lie on the cold and slippery floor in front of the sculptured daughter of Numitor, and by the faint light of her resinous torch she would gaze for long hours at the features of the slender maiden sleeping in the sacred cave. With every day it became more apparent to Maria that she was strangely like this ancient vestal, and little by little in her dreams, she became less able to distinguish which was poor Maria, the daughter of Rufus the Scribe, and which the unhappy Ilia, daughter of the King of Alba Longa. She always called herself Rhea Silvia. Lying in front of the picture she would dream that to her, in this new sacred cave, the god Mars would appear, and that from their divine embraces there would be born of her the twins Romulus and Remus, who would become the founders of the Eternal City. True, she would have to pay for this by her death—and be drowned in the muddy waters of the Tiber—but could death terrify Maria? She often fell asleep while musing thus before the bas-relief, and dreamed of this same god Mars with his noble face of marvellous beauty and his divine, consuming embrace. And when she awoke she would not know whether it had been dream or reality.

It was already scorching July, when the streets of Rome at midday were as empty as after the terrible command of King Totila. But in the underground palace it was damp and cool. Maria, as before, went there every day to muse, in her habitual sweet reveries, before the pictured Ilia, who lay dreaming of the god destined for her. And one day, when in a slight doze, she was once again giving herself up to the ardent caresses of the god Mars, suddenly a noise of some kind forced her to awake. She opened her eyes, not understanding anything as yet, and glanced around. By the light of the little torch which she had placed in a cranny between the stones, she saw before her a young man. He was not in warlike armour, but wore the dress usually worn at that time by poor Romans; his face, however, was full of nobility, and to Maria it appeared radiant with a marvellous beauty. For some moments she looked with amazement on the unexpected apparition, on the man who had found his way into this enchanted palace which she had thought unknown to anyone save herself. Then, sitting upright on the floor, the girl asked simply:

“You have come to me?”

The young man smiled a quiet and attractive smile, and answered by another question.

“But who are you, maiden? The genius of this place?”

Maria answered:

“I—am Rhea Silvia, a vestal virgin, daughter of King Numitor. And are you not the god Mars, come in search of me?”

“No, I am no god,” objected the young man. “I am a mortal, my name is Agapit, and I was not searching here for you. But all the same, I am glad to find you. Greeting to you, daughter of King Numitor!”

Maria invited the young man to sit down beside her, and he at once consented. So they sat together, youth and maiden, on the damp floor, in the magnificent hall of Nero’s Golden House, buried under ground, and they looked into each other’s eyes and knew not at first what to talk about. Then Maria pointed out the bas-relief to the young man and began to tell him all the legend of the unhappy vestal. But the youth interrupted her story.

“I know this, Rhea,” said he, “but how strange! The face of the girl in the bas-relief is actually like yours.”

“It is I,” answered Maria.

So much conviction was in her words that the youth was perplexed and knew not what to think. But Maria gently placed her hand on his shoulder and began to speak ingratiatingly, almost timidly.

“Do not deny it:—you are the god Mars in the form of a mortal. But I recognise you. I have expected you for a long while. I knew that you would come. I am not afraid of death. Let them drown me in the Tiber.”

For a long while the young man listened to Maria’s incoherent speech. All around was strange. This underground palace, known to no one, with its magnificent apartments where only lizards and bats were living. And the obscurity of this immense hall, barely lighted by the faint light of the two torches. And this obscure maiden, like the Rhea Silvia of the ancient bas-relief, with her unintelligible speeches, who in some marvellous fashion had lighted upon the buried Golden House of Nero. The young man felt that the rude actuality of the life he had lived just before his entrance into the underground dwelling had vanished into thin air as a dream disappears in the morning. In another moment he might have believed that he himself was the god Mars, and that he had met here his beloved, Ilia the vestal, the daughter of Numitor. Putting the greatest restraint upon himself, he broke in upon Maria’s speech.

“Dear maiden,” said he, “listen to me. You are mistaken about me. I am not he for whom you take me. I will tell you the whole truth. Agapit is not my real name. I am a Goth, and my name is really Theodat. But I am obliged to conceal my origin, for I should be put to death if it were known. Haven’t you heard, by my pronunciation, that I am not a Roman. When my fellow-countrymen left your city, I did not follow them. I love Rome, I love its history and its tradition. I want to live and die in the Eternal City, which once belonged to us. So now, under the name of Agapit, I am in the service of an armourer; I work by day, and in the evenings I wander about the city and admire its memorials which have escaped destruction. As I knew that Nero’s Golden House had been built on this spot, I got in to this underground palace so that I could admire the remains of its former beauty. That is all. I have told you the whole truth, and I do not think you will betray me, for one word from you would be enough to have me put to death.”

Maria listened to the words of Theodat with incredulity and dissatisfaction. After a little thought she said: “Why are you deceiving me? Why do you wish to take the form of a Goth? Can I not see the nimbus round your head? Mars Gradivus, for others thou art a god, for me thou art my beloved. Do not mock thy poor bride, Rhea Silvia!”

Theodat looked again for a long while at the young girl who spoke such foolish words, and he began to guess that Maria was not in her right mind. And when this thought came into his head he said to himself, “Poor girl! I will never take advantage of your unprotected state! This would be unworthy of a Goth.” Then he gently put his arms around Maria and began to talk to her as to a little child, not contradicting her strange fancies but acknowledging himself to be the god Mars. And for a long while they sat side by side in the semi-darkness, not exchanging one kiss, talking and dreaming together of the future Rome which would be founded by their twin sons Romulus and Remus. At last the torches began to burn low, and Theodat said to Maria:

“Dear Rhea Silvia, it is already late. We must go away from here.”

“But you will come again to-morrow?” asked Maria.

Theodat looked at the young girl. She seemed to him strangely attractive, with her thin, half-childish figure, the hectic flush on her cheeks and her deep black eyes. There was an incomprehensible attraction in this meeting of theirs in the dim hall of the buried palace, before the marvellous bas-relief of an unknown artist. Theodat desired to repeat these minutes of strange intercourse with the poor crazy girl, and he answered:

“Yes, maiden, to-morrow at this hour, after my day’s work, I will come again to you here.”

Hand in hand they went in the direction of the way out. Theodat had a rope ladder with him. He helped Maria to climb up to the hole which served as an entrance to the palace. Evening had already fallen when they reached the streets.

Before they separated Theodat said once more, looking into Maria’s eyes:

“Remember, maiden, you must not tell anyone that you have met me. It might cost me my life. Good-bye until to-morrow.”

He got out first into the open-air and was soon out of sight round a bend of the road. Maria went slowly home. If it happened that evening that she had a talk with her father, she would not tell him that at last Mars Gradivus had come to her.

V

Theodat did not deceive Maria. Next day, towards evening he really came again to the Golden House and to the bas-relief representing Mars and Rhea Silvia, where Maria was already awaiting him. The young man had brought with him some bread and cheese and some wine, and they had their supper together in the magnificent hall of Nero’s palace. Maria mused aloud again about the beauty of life in the past, about gods, heroes, and emperors, mixing up stories of her own experiences with the wanderings of her fancy; but Theodat, with his arm around the girl, gently stroked her hand or her shoulder, and admired the black depth of her eyes. Then they walked together through the empty underground rooms, shedding the light of their torches on the great creations of Greek and Roman genius. When they parted they again exchanged a promise to meet on the following day.

From that time, every day, when Theodat had finished his dull labour at the armourer’s workshop, where they made and repaired helmets, pikes, and armour for the company of Byzantines who were garrisoning Rome, he went to meet the strange young girl who thought herself to be the vestal virgin Ilia, alive once more. There was an unconquerable attraction for the young man in the lissom body of the girl and in her half-foolish words, to which he was ready to listen for whole hours together. They explored together all the halls, corridors, and rooms of the palace, as far as they could get; they rejoiced together over each newly-found statue, each newly-noticed bas-relief, and there was never a day but some unexpected discovery filled their souls with a new rapture. Day after day they lived in an unchanging happiness—enjoying the creations of Art, and in moments of emotion before a new-found marble sculpture, the work perhaps of Praxiteles, young man and maiden would lean towards one another and embrace in a pure and blessed kiss.

Imperceptibly Theodat began to consider the Golden House of Nero as his own home, and Maria became to him the nearest and dearest being in the world. How this happened Theodat himself did not know. But all the rest of the time which he spent on the earth seemed to him a burdensome and distasteful obligation, and only the time that he spent with Rhea Silvia underground, in the palace of the ancient emperor, seemed to him to be real life. The whole day the young man awaited in a torture of impatience the moment when he could at last leave the brass helmets and hammers and pincers, and with the rope ladder hidden under his garments run off to the slope of the Esquiline for his secret meeting. Only by these meetings did Theodat reckon his days. If he had been asked what attracted him in Maria he would have found it difficult to answer. But without her, without her simple talk, without her strange eyes—all his life would have seemed empty and void.

On the earth, in the armourer’s workshop, or in his own pitiful little room which he rented from a priest, Theodat could reason sanely. He would say to himself that this Rhea Silvia was a poor crazy girl, and that he himself perhaps was doing wrong in corroborating her pernicious fancies. But when he went down into the cool damp obscurity of the Golden House, Theodat, as it were, changed everything—his thoughts and his soul. He became something different, not what he was in the sultry heat of the Roman day or in the stifling atmosphere of the forge. He felt himself in another world there, where in reality could be met both the vestal virgin Ilia, daughter of King Numitor, and the god Mars, who had taken upon himself the form of a young Goth. In this world everything was possible and all miracles were natural. In this world the past was still living, and the fables of the poets were clearly realised at every step.

Not that Theodat fully believed in Maria’s delusions. But when, before some statue of an ancient emperor she would begin to speak of meeting him on the Forum and talking with him, it seemed to Theodat that something of the sort had actually taken place. When Maria told him about the riches of her father, King Numitor, Theodat was ready to think that she was speaking the truth. And when she had visions of the glories of the future Rome, which would be founded by the new Romulus and Remus, Theodat himself was led to develop these visions, and to speak about the new victories of the Eternal City, its new conquests of territory, its new world-wide fame.... And together they would imagine the names of the coming emperors who would rule in their children’s city.... Maria always spoke of herself as Rhea Silvia and of Theodat as Mars, and he became so accustomed to these names that there were times when he deliberately called himself by the name of the ancient Roman god of war. And when both of them, young man and maiden, were intoxicated by the darkness and by the marvellous creations of Art, by their nearness to one another and by their strange half-crazy dreams, Theodat almost began to feel in his veins the divine ichor of an Olympian god.

And again the days went by. At the very beginning of his acquaintance with Maria, Theodat had promised himself to spare the crazy girl and not to take advantage of her weak intellect and her unprotected state. But with each new meeting it became in every way more and more difficult for him to keep his word. Meeting every day the girl he already loved with all the passion of youthful love, spending long hours with her alone in this isolated place, in the half-darkness, touching her hands and shoulders, feeling her breathing close beside him, and exchanging kisses with her;—Theodat was obliged to use greater and greater effort not to press the girl to himself in a strong embrace, not to draw her to him with those caresses with which the god Mars had once drawn to himself the first vestal. And Maria not only did not avoid such caresses, but she even, as it were, sought them, leaning towards him, attracting him to her with all her being. She lingered in Theodat’s arms when he kissed her, she herself pressed him to her bosom when they were admiring the statues and pictures, she seemed every moment to be questioning the youth with her large black eyes, as if she were asking him, “When?” “Will it be soon?” “I am tired of waiting.” Theodat would ask himself “—— And can it be true that she is crazy? Then I must be crazy too! And is not our craziness better than the reasonable life of other people. Why should we deny ourselves the full joy of love?”

And so that which was inevitable came to its fulfilment. The marriage chamber of Maria and Theodat was one of the magnificent halls of the Golden House of Nero. The resin twists, lighted and placed in ancient bronze candlesticks in the form of Cupids, were their bridal torches. The union of the young couple was blessed by the marble gods, sculptured by Praxiteles, who looked down with unearthly smiles from their niches of porphyry. The great silence of the buried palace hid in itself the first passionate sighs of the newly-wedded pair and their pale faces were overshadowed by the mysterious obscurity of the underground palace. There was no solemn banquet, no marriage songs, but long ages of glory and power overshadowed the bridal couch, and its earth and ashes seemed to the lovers softer and more desirable than the down of Pontine swans in the sleeping apartments of Byzantium.

From that evening Maria and Theodat began to meet as lovers. Their long talks were mingled with long caresses. They exchanged passionate confessions and passionate vows—in almost senseless speeches. They wandered again through the empty rooms of the Golden House, not so much attracted now by the pictures and statues, the marble walls and the mosaics, as by the possibility in the new room to fall again and again into each other’s embraces. They still dreamed of the future Rome which would be founded by their children, but this happy vision was already eclipsed by the happiness of their unrestrained kisses in whose burning atmosphere vanished not only actuality but also dreams. They still called themselves Rhea Silvia and the god Mars, but they had already become poor earthly lovers, a happy couple, like thousands and thousands of others living on the earth after thousands and thousands of centuries.

VI

Never, outside the hall of the subterranean palace, did Theodat try to meet Maria nor she him. They only existed for one another in the Golden House of Nero. Perhaps they might even not have recognised one another on the earth. Theodat might have ceased to be for Maria the god Mars, and Maria would not have seemed to Theodat beautiful and wonderful. Truly, after their union, the honourable young Goth had said to himself that he ought to find out the real relatives of the young girl, to marry her and openly acknowledge her as his wife before all people. But day after day he put off the fulfilment of this resolve; it would have been terrible for him to destroy the fairy-like enchantment in which he was living, terrible to exchange the unheard of ways of the underground hall for the ordinary realities. Perhaps Theodat did not thus explain his delay to himself, but, all the same, he did not hasten to bring to an end the burning happiness of these secret meetings, and every time he parted with Maria he renewed his vow to her that on the morrow he would come again. And she expected him and asked for nothing more; for her this visionary blessedness was sufficient—to be the beloved of a god.

“Thou wilt always love me?” Theodat would ask, pressing the lissom body of Maria in his strong arms.

But she would shake her head and say:

“I will love thee until death. But thou art an immortal, and soon I must die. They will drown me in the waters of the Tiber.”

“No, no,” Theodat would say, “that will not happen. We shall live together and die together. Without thee I do not wish to be immortal. And after death we shall love each other just the same there in our Olympus.”

But Maria would look at him distrustfully. She expected death and was prepared for it. She only wished one thing—to prolong her happiness as long as it was possible.

The young man told himself that he ought secretly to follow Maria and find out where she lived—go to her real home and to her true father and tell him that he, Agapit, loved this young girl and wanted to make her his wife. But when the hour of parting drew near, when Maria having heard Theodat vow that he would come again to-morrow to the Golden House, glided away like a thin shadow into the evening distance—the youth would once more postpone his action. “Let this be put off another day! Let us meet once more as Rhea Silvia and the god Mars! Let this fairy tale still continue.” And he would go home, to the little room he rented from the priest, to dream all night of his beloved and solace himself with the new happiness of remembrance. And Theodat never asked anyone about the strange black-eyed girl, though almost everyone in Rome knew Maria. But in reality he did not wish to know anything about her except this—that she was the vestal Ilia, and that every evening she lovingly awaited him in the subterranean hall of Nero’s underground palace.

But one day Maria having waited till the evening, awaited Theodat in vain; the youth did not come. Grieved and disturbed, Maria went home again. Her mind had in a way become somewhat clearer since she had given herself to Theodat and she was able to console herself with the thought that something must have prevented him from coming. But the youth did not come the next day, nor the next. He suddenly disappeared completely and it was in vain that Maria waited for him at the appointed place hour after hour, day after day—waited in anguish, in despair, sobbing, praying to the ancient gods, and using the words which her mother had once taught her: there came no answer to her tears and prayers. As before, an unearthly smile played over the faces of the gods in their niches in the walls; as before, the superb rooms of the ancient palace gleamed with paintings and mosaics, but the Golden House suddenly became empty and terrible for Maria. From a blessed paradise, from the land of the Elysian fields, it had suddenly been changed into a hall of cruel torture, into a black Tartarus where was only horror and solitude, unendurable grief and unbearable pain. With an insane hope Maria went every day as before to the underground dwelling, but now she went there as to a place of torture. There awaited her the hours of disappointed expectation, the terrible reminders of her late happiness and her long-renewed inconsolable tears.

It was most terrible of all, most distressing of all, near the bas-relief which represented Rhea Silvia sleeping in the sacred cave with the god Mars coming towards her. All her remembrances drew Maria to this bas-relief, yet near it the most unconquerable grief would overwhelm her soul. She would fall on the floor and beat her head against the stone mosaic pavement, closing her eyes that she might not behold the radiant face of the god. “Come back, come back!” she would repeat in her frenzy. “Come just once again! Divine, immortal; have pity on my sufferings. Let me see thee once again. I have not yet told thee all, have not given thee all my kisses; I must, I must see thee once again in life. And after that let me die, let them cast me into the waters of the Tiber, and I will not resist. Have pity on me, Divine One!” And Maria would open her eyes again, and by the faint light of the torch she would see the unmoved face of the sculptured god and then once more the remembrance of the blessedness which had suddenly been taken away from her would overwhelm her and she would burst into new tears and sobs and wails. And she herself would hardly know if the god Mars had come to her, if in her life there had been those days of perfect happiness or if she had dreamed them amongst thousands of other dreams.

With every day her expectations grew more hopeless. Every day she would return to her home more anguished and more shaken. In those hours when there were glimmerings of consciousness in her soul she remembered dimly all that Theodat had once told her about himself. Then she would wander through the streets of Rome, and under various pretexts she would look into all the armourer’s workshops, but nowhere did she meet with him she sought. To speak to anyone of her grief and of her vanished happiness was impossible for her and no one would have believed the stories of the poor crazy girl—everyone would have considered them to be new wanderings of her disordered imagination. So Maria lived alone with her grief and her despair, and her mother only shook her head dejectedly as she saw her becoming thinner and more wasted, her cheeks more sunken and her eyes burning more feverishly and with more strange and fiery reflections.

But the days passed by inconsolably—for the poor crazy girl, for the despoiled Eternal City, and for the whole world in which a new life was slowly coming to birth. The days went by; Justinian celebrated his final victories over the remaining Goths, the Lombards thought out their Italian campaign, the popes secretly forged the links of that chain which in the future would connect Rome with all the world, the Romans continued to live their poor and oppressed lives, and one day Maria understood at last that she would become a mother. The vestal Rhea Silvia to whom the god Mars had condescended from his Olympus, began to feel within herself the pulsations of a new life—were they not the twins, the new Romulus and Remus who must found the new Rome?

To no one, neither to father nor to mother, did Maria speak of what she felt. It was her secret. But she was strangely quieted by her discovery. Her dreams were being completely fulfilled. She must give birth to the founders of Rome and afterwards await death in the muddy waters of the Tiber.

VII

Sometimes guests would gather together in the house of old Rufus, a neighbouring merchant who sold cheap women’s finery on the Forum, the coppersmith’s son who at one time had wished to court Maria, an infirm orator who could no longer find a use for his learning, and a few other poverty stricken people who were dejectedly living out their days, only meeting one another to complain of their unhappy lot. They would drink poor wine and eat a little garlic, and among their customary complaints they would cautiously interpolate bitter words about the Byzantine rule and the inhuman demands of the new general who lived on the Palatine in place of the departed eunuch Narses. Florentia would serve the guests, and pour out wine for them, and at the speeches of the old orator she would quietly cross herself at the mention of the accursed gods.

At one of these gatherings Maria was sitting in a corner of the room, having come home that day earlier than usual from her wanderings. Nobody paid any attention to her. They were all accustomed to see among them the silent girl whom they had long ago considered to be insane. She never joined in the conversation and no one ever addressed a remark to her. She sat with her head bent in a melancholy fashion and never moved, apparently hearing nothing of the speeches made by the drinking party.

On this day they were talking especially about the severity of the new general. But the coppersmith’s son took upon himself to defend him.

“We must take into account,” said he, “that at the present time it is necessary to act rigorously. There are many spies going about the city. The barbarians may fall on us again. Then we should have to endure another siege. These accursed Goths, when they took themselves out of the town for good, had hidden their treasures in various places. And now first one and then another of them comes back to Rome secretly and in disguise, digs up the hidden treasure and carries it away. Such people must be caught, and it would never do to be easy with them; the Romans will have all their riches stolen.”

The words of the coppersmith’s son aroused curiosity. They began to ask him questions. He readily told all that he knew about the treasures hidden by the Goths in various parts of Rome, and how those of them who had escaped destruction strove to seek out these stores and carry them off. Then he added:

“And it’s only lately they caught one of them. He was clambering up the Esquiline, where there is an opening in the ground. He had a rope-ladder. They caught him and took him to the general. The general promised to spare him if the accursed one would show exactly where the treasure was hidden. But he was obstinate and would say nothing. They tortured him and tortured him, but got nothing out of him. So they tortured him to death.”

“And is he dead?” asked someone.

“Of course he’s dead,” said the coppersmith’s son.

Suddenly an unexpected illumination lit up the confused mind of Maria. She stood up to her full height. Her large eyes grew still larger. Pressing both hands to her bosom, she asked in a breaking voice:

“And what was his name, what was the name ... of this Goth?”

The coppersmith’s son knew all about it. So he answered at once:

“He called himself Agapit; he was working quite near here, in an armourer’s workshop.”

And with a shriek, Maria fell face downwards on the floor.

Maria was ill for a long while, for many weeks. On the first day of her illness a child was born prematurely, a pitiful lump of flesh which it was impossible to call either a boy or a girl. Florentia, with all her harshness, loved her daughter. While Maria lay unconscious for many days her mother tended her and never left her side. She called in a midwife and a priest. When at length Maria came to her senses Florentia had no reproachful tears for her, she only wept inconsolably and pressed her daughter to her bosom. Her mother-soul had divined everything. Later on, when Maria was a little better her mother told her all that had happened and did not reproach her.

But Maria listened to her mother with a strange distrust. How could Rhea Silvia believe it, when she was destined, by the will of the gods, to bring forth the twins Romulus and Remus? Either the girl’s mind was entirely overclouded or she believed her former dreams more than actuality—at the words of her mother she merely shook her head in weakness. She thought her mother was deceiving her, that during her illness she had borne twins which had been taken from her, put into a wicker-basket and thrown into the Tiber. But Maria knew that a wolf would find and nourish them, for they must be the founders of the new Rome.

As long as Maria was so weak that she could not raise her head no one wondered that she would answer no questions and would be silent whole days, neither asking for food nor drink nor wishing to pronounce a monosyllable. But when she recovered a little and found strength to go about the house Maria continued to be silent, hiding in her soul some treasured thought. She did not even want to talk to her father any more and she was not pleased when he began to declaim verses from the ancient poets.

At length, one morning when her father had gone out on business and her mother was at market Maria unexpectedly disappeared from home. No one noticed her departure. And no one saw her again alive. But after some days the muddy waters of the Tiber cast her lifeless body on the shore.

Poor girl! Poor vestal of the broken vows! One would like to believe that throwing thy body into the cold embraces of the water thou wert convinced that thy children, the twins Romulus and Remus, were at that moment drinking the warm milk of the she-wolf, and that in time to come they would raise up the first rampart of the future Eternal City. If in the moment of thy death thou hadst no doubt of this, thou wert perhaps the happiest of all the people in that pitiful half-destroyed Rome towards which were already moving from the Alps the hordes of the wild Lombards.