MARCUS POMPONIUS kept his household gods in the temple of Rhea-Cybele. They had stood of old within the atrium, but Placidia did not much like them there, and at a time when they had been married but a few months, to please his wife was easier for Marcus than now. Therefore the Lar — a bronze statue to Tiberius Pomponius, the founder of the clan — and the Penates — two gracious but archaic figures of red granite, bearing garlands — were all removed. And now they would be moved again, for the father of Arcadius had built a new and fair house of white marble and cedar, richly adorned and dedicated to Pan. He knew that his son must worship here, and learning from Valentinian himself that there was no objection, raised this beautiful temple and transferred the household gods thereto, that they might be under the eye of Arcadius in years to come. Pan himself consented to visit the dwelling raised in his honour.
At dusk, when the great night moths were sucking honey from the garlands, he came, sat with Arcadius and his father for an hour and ate some of the yellow figs for which the fruit gardens of Pomponius were famed.
Pan praised his temple and approved the piety that had raised so beautiful a monument.
“It may interest you to learn,” he said, “that this is the last sanctuary made by the hands of man that will ever be erected to me. Other temples I shall continue to have; but here is the final memorial to be lifted by the purpose of devout mankind.”
He spoke with that directness and lucidity which is proper to godhead. Indeed when discussing Marcus to his face, Pan caused him some uneasiness, for the good soul, while he knew the truth of what he heard, had covered up these facts with the decency of a patrician, who likes not to wash his dirty linen in public company, or even in private thought. His position he accepted and merely hoped that other people were not so much alive to it as himself. But Pan spoke forthrightly.
“You must not expect to live much longer, Marcus Pomponius,” he said. “Your vitality was somewhat low from the beginning, and you have been hen-pecked and mother-ridden for fifteen years. The ladies, who love you so well, both enjoy a superb fulness of life, and between the upper and nether millstones of their devotion your attrition is nearly complete. The idolatry of your mother and the worship of your wife have, in fact, added twenty years to your existence. In a measure the fault is your own. Latona should have gone to the dower house when you wedded; and you knew it; but these things will be as they will, and you could not modify your own weak disposition, or take precaution against your perils. You have, however, the satisfaction of knowing that the gods will last your time; but Arcadius must live to see grave changes. You have escaped much. Placidia and Latona never fought for your soul. That might have happened; but our early Christians still echo the tolerance and patience which mankind inherits from philosophy. This will quickly pass from them with access of power. The new religion must harden into authority and freeze into tyranny, for the strong are seldom patient or tolerant, and Christianity will not long endure to see devout spirits at any altars but her own.”
“I would perish for Rhea-Cybele,” declared Marcus.
“You will not be invited to do so,” answered Pan. “To die for a dying cause wins no fame, since there are none to applaud. Julian will be exceedingly unpopular for the next two thousand years or so, because he sought to breathe life into the moribund.”
“Does it matter?” asked Arcadius.
“To the fame of Julian, yes,” answered Pan. “Indeed there are clouds now forming to drift so thickly over the world and all its accepted heroes and sages that most of them must entirely disappear for a considerable time.”
“The heroes disappear!” gasped Marcus “Why, the ambition of the day is a world that shall be fit for our heroes to live in! People speak of eternal peace and shutting the temple of Janus indefinitely.”
“It will certainly be shut,” answered Pan, “but that is not going to spell eternal peace for the Empire, I assure you.”
“I hope not,” replied Marcus, who, though not warlike, enjoyed to see the martial spirit as displayed by others. “A world fit for heroes to live in should surely never be a peaceful world. Not heroes themselves talk thus, but the plebeians, whose highest dream is security. Security is no ideal for the great. Only the lowly born desire it.”
“And why, my friend?” asked Pan. “Because they have never known such a thing. The powerful and safe take their security as a matter of course: their ideal is to live dangerously; but the poor, who do live dangerously, because they can no other, yearn before all else to be able to trust to-morrow. And this is what Christianity promises they shall do.”
The god turned to Arcadius.
“So it is with all happiness — concerning which you are so interested. The criterion of happiness is that it should never have been consciously tasted. Therefore man is seldom happy in the present. Looking back he says, ‘I knew happiness then and was unaware’; gazing into the future he sees the ghost of things to be and cries, ‘I shall be happy when that happens.’ It happens, but brings along with it a score of other happenings to cloud the anticipated sunshine.”
“In fact when you are really happy, it appears that you don’t know it, Mighty One,” said Arcadius.
“Very often, my son. Consider the lowly matter of perfect, bodily well-being — the highest physical happiness. Who revels therein until it is lost and memory reminds him of perfect digestion, long-sighted eyes, dreamless sleep, scorn of fatigue?”
“Most true, dear God,” sighed Marcus Pomponius. “I impress upon this boy,” he continued, “that happiness is less than serenity, and endurance greater than contentment. The intelligent man cannot be contented with things as they are; but he can keep his nerve, seeing that to lose it advances no cause.”
“Let us have discipline without tears,” answered Pan. “And now I must be going.”
He took his leave of them and blessed father and son generously before doing so.
“Say nothing of this solemn occasion to your stepmother,” advised Marcus, when he was alone with his lad. “It would give her no pleasure, unfortunately.”
• • •
They had sat long into the dusk and a chill wind blew through the pillars of the temple. Marcus shivered slightly, and prepared to return to the house. But he had caught a cold, and at dead of night Arcadius mounted a strong horse and galloped off to Rome, that he might summon disciples of Galen; for his grandmother roused him in the extremity of grief to say that Pomponius appeared to be seriously ill.
With youthful ardour and ignorant of medical etiquette, Arcadius roused no less than ten eminent practitioners, and hearing who suffered, not one of the ten delayed a moment. A procession of chariots whirled off to the Pomponian villa, and before morning light the cream of the profession stood beside the couch of Marcus.
They agreed that nothing of any consequence was the matter, retired to consult, tossed up who should send a bolus, and when the lot fell on Lucius Curtius Rufus, handed the case over to him.
He quickly cured his patient of a slight bronchitis; but catarrh followed: Marcus could not sleep in comfort, and developed a very trying cough.
The physician suggested a change, and his patient took it. He went to the sea, and rather wished for Arcadius as sole companion, but neither his wife nor his mother would dream of such a thing. Both accompanied him to Ostia, and though he and Arcadius poured libations to Neptune in secret, and Arcadius, boating among the islands, saw and fell in love with a blue-haired nereid, Marcus came home nothing bettered.
When the winter returned, there fell a day upon which Pomponius declined to get up, and an event so unparalleled caused utmost consternation. The janitor hastened at once for Lucius Rufus, and a very painful incident marked the occasion, for the sick man begged — nay commanded — both his wife and mother to leave his apartment, while he insisted that Arcadius should remain. Both noble women bitterly resented this indignity, and they walked up and down the atrium waiting for the doctor and quarrelling between themselves in a very afflicting manner.
“It’s all your fault,” said Placidia. “You have pandered to him over this wretched boy. The thing was an outrage from the beginning, and instead of killing it with ridicule, as I endeavoured to do, you let it go on until Arcadius has become far more to my husband than I am — or you either.”
“You are mistaken,” answered the elder, “and if you talk so loudly the servants will hear you. Marcus never abated in his love of me. Can a mother — ?”
“Not too much ‘mother,’ please,” answered Placidia in her metallic tones.
“It is your gothic want of refinement rather than failure of offspring that has chilled Marcus toward you,” replied Latona, and her daughter-in-law flamed furious at so grave an insult. They both forgot themselves, to the secret entertainment of menials who were dusting the statues. Placidia failed to remember that she was a daughter of the house of Spartianus; and for two pins the infuriated mother of Marcus would have slapped the younger’s blazing cheek.
“This cannot and shall not go on,” said Placidia, stamping her sandalled foot. She had been making the same remark for fourteen years.
“Not if his mother can help it,” replied Latona.
“Things have now come to a climax and I will tolerate no more,” declared Placidia.
“When you have borne half as much as I have, it will be time to stamp,” retorted the matron.
Then Lucius Rufus hastened through the entrance with a bag of healing drugs, and, at the same moment, Arcadius descended from his father’s chamber. For the villa boasted two storeys and was famous on that account.
“Marcus Pomponius is dead!” cried the boy. Then he flung himself on the ground and wept. Rufus ran upstairs, so fast that his tunic fluttered. He was followed by the distracted women; but the physician came too late. The patient had passed peacefully away with his head on the breast of his son.
• • •
The Pomponian burial ground lay within the boundaries of the estate, and on the forenoon of the eighth day after his death, they bore Marcus to the grave. Pontifical law regulated the details, and torches — the funeral symbol — blazed wanly under the sun’s eye. Since his family was honorata, and members thereof had held curule offices, a considerable amount of pomp and ritual accompanied the obsequies. Lictors were present and the city fathers. Valentinian himself sent a royal representative, not because he much admired Marcus, but out of honour to a race that had done the state good service.
Beside the dead man’s coffin sat a life-sized wooden doll clothed in his garments and with a waxen face that closely resembled him. A procession of ‘ancestors’ accompanied the funeral — living men clad in the insignia and wearing the masks of the mighty dead Pomponians. Ten musicians blowing instruments of brass led the way; but there were no dancers to amuse the spectators, because the funeral was private and only dignitaries of Rome, the family and the family servants attended it. The officials of the temple of Libitina had been duly notified, and they ordered and arranged the ceremony with their usual tact and attention to detail.
Placidia and Latona walked behind the dead and Arcadius walked behind them.
So they laid Marcus Pomponius in the marble vaults of his mausoleum under its grove of sighing Cyprus, strewed white flowers upon him, chanted a dirge and then partook of the funeral feast laid, according to custom, within the dwelling of the dead.
Nine days later a distinguished gathering revisited the house of the sleepers, offered a sacrifice to the manes of the departed and consumed a dreary little meal of eggs, lentils and salt. Then they doffed their mourning attire and faced life once more.
The dead man’s will caused a measure of pain to the wife and mother of Marcus.
For Latona indeed he had amply provided, but in the case of his wife, knowing exceedingly well that Placidia would remarry as soon as expedient, he made no very elaborate provision. She had long been an object of admiration and desire to Claudius P. Mamertinus, an elderly and Christian senator of good repute; and since this excellent man possessed great wealth, Marcus acted accordingly.
Arcadius was his heir, but until the lad donned toga virilis, Latona was appointed guardian of the estates and revenues; while for the rest, Marcus expressed wishes concerning the freedom to be given certain slaves, together with a multitude of little remembrances to his friends and staff.
It is pleasing to relate that the mother and wife of the dead man became entirely and beautifully reconciled upon his passing. No harsh word ever passed between them again, and when in due time her daughter-in-law celebrated marriage with old Mamertinus, Latona in a tolerant spirit worthy of her race, attended the Christian ceremony and gave the bride a very handsome necklace of pearls and aquamarines set in silver. These well accorded with Placidia’s somewhat frosty charms.
Arcadius, though not invited to the wedding, despatched a gift from the Pomponian heirlooms by the permission of his grandmother. For, thought he, “My father liked this woman well enough to wed her; therefore there must be virtues in her which have not met my inexperienced eyes.”
The lad mourned beyond the allotted term, watered his couch with tears and cruelly missed the tender soul who had welcomed him with such paternal kindness and lifted him from a humble vine-dresser into his present splendid position.
As time passed, Latona found herself much drawn to her grandson and imagined in him paternal evidences of Marcus which did not actually exist, for Arcadius favoured his mother. But the young man’s reverence for his father’s spirit and devotion to his memory gratified Latona, while the ability and good sense of Arcadius made her sanguine that she might live to see him revive some of the vanished glories of the race.
He constantly mentioned his twin brother, and longed that life would bring them together; but seeing that the unknown was not of the old faith, Latona rather trusted this might not happen.