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Title: Quo Vadis A Narrative of the Time of Nero
Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Release Date: October, 2001 [EBook #2853]
[This file was updated on November 23, 2003]
Edition: 11
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, QUO VADIS ***
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QUO VADIS
A Narrative of the Time of Nero
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin
TO AUGUSTE COMTE,
Of San Francisco, Cal.,
MY DEAR FRIEND AND CLASSMATE, I BEG TO DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.
JEREMIAH CURTIN
INTRODUCTORY
IN the trilogy “With Fire and Sword,” “The Deluge,” and “Pan Michael,”
Sienkiewicz has given pictures of a great and decisive epoch in modern
history. The results of the struggle begun under Bogdan Hmelnitski have
been felt for more than two centuries, and they are growing daily in
importance. The Russia which rose out of that struggle has become a
power not only of European but of world-wide significance, and, to all
human seeming, she is yet in an early stage of her career.
In “Quo Vadis” the author gives us pictures of opening scenes in the
conflict of moral ideas with the Roman Empire,—a conflict from which
Christianity issued as the leading force in history.
The Slays are not so well known to Western Europe or to us as they are
sure to be in the near future; hence the trilogy, with all its
popularity and merit, is not appreciated yet as it will be.
The conflict described in “Quo Vadis” is of supreme interest to a vast
number of persons reading English; and this book will rouse, I think,
more attention at first than anything written by Sienkiewicz hitherto.
JEREMIAH CURTIN
ILOM, NORTHERN GUATEMALA,
June, 1896
QUO VADIS
Quo Vadis A Narrative of the Time of Nero
by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Cuurtin
PETRONIUS woke only about midday, and as usual greatly wearied. The
evening before he had been at one of Nero’s feasts, which was prolonged
till late at night. For some time his health had been failing. He said
himself that he woke up benumbed, as it were, and without power of
collecting his thoughts. But the morning bath and careful kneading of
the body by trained slaves hastened gradually the course of his slothful
blood, roused him, quickened him, restored his strength, so that he
issued from the elæothesium, that is, the last division of the bath, as
if he had risen from the dead, with eyes gleaming from wit and gladness,
rejuvenated, filled with life, exquisite, so unapproachable that Otho
himself could not compare with him, and was really that which he had
been called,—arbiter elegantiarum.
He visited the public baths rarely, only when some rhetor happened there
who roused admiration and who was spoken of in the city, or when in the
ephebias there were combats of exceptional interest. Moreover, he had
in his own “insula” private baths which Celer, the famous contemporary
of Severus, had extended for him, reconstructed and arranged with such
uncommon taste that Nero himself acknowledged their excellence over
those of the Emperor, though the imperial baths were more extensive and
finished with incomparably greater luxury.
After that feast, at which he was bored by the jesting of Vatinius with
Nero, Lucan, and Seneca, he took part in a diatribe as to whether woman
has a soul. Rising late, he used, as was his custom, the baths. Two
enormous balneatores laid him on a cypress table covered with snow-white
Egyptian byssus, and with hands dipped in perfumed olive oil began to
rub his shapely body; and he waited with closed eyes till the heat of
the laconicum and the heat of their hands passed through him and
expelled weariness.
But after a certain time he spoke, and opened his eyes; he inquired
about the weather, and then about gems which the jeweller Idomeneus had
promised to send him for examination that day. It appeared that the
weather was beautiful, with a light breeze from the Alban hills, and
that the gems had not been brought. Petronius closed his eyes again,
and had given command to bear him to the tepidarium, when from behind
the curtain the nomenclator looked in, announcing that young Marcus
Vinicius, recently returned from Asia Minor, had come to visit him.
Petronius ordered to admit the guest to the tepidarium, to which he was
borne himself. Vinicius was the son of his oldest sister, who years
before had married Marcus Vinicius, a man of consular dignity from the
time of Tiberius. The young man was serving then under Corbulo against
the Parthians, and at the close of the war had returned to the city.
Petronius had for him a certain weakness bordering on attachment, for
Marcus was beautiful and athletic, a young man who knew how to preserve
a certain aesthetic measure in his profligacy; this, Petronius prized
above everything.
“A greeting to Petronius,” said the young man, entering the tepidarium
with a springy step. “May all the gods grant thee success, but
especially Asklepios and Kypris, for under their double protection
nothing evil can meet one.”
“I greet thee in Rome, and may thy rest be sweet after war,” replied
Petronius, extending his hand from between the folds of soft karbas
stuff in which he was wrapped. “What’s to be heard in Armenia; or since
thou wert in Asia, didst thou not stumble into Bithynia?”
Petronius on a time had been proconsul in Bithynia, and, what is more,
he had governed with energy and justice. This was a marvellous contrast
in the character of a man noted for effeminacy and love of luxury; hence
he was fond of mentioning those times, as they were a proof of what he
had been, and of what he might have become had it pleased him.
“I happened to visit Heraklea,” answered Vinicius. “Corbulo sent me
there with an order to assemble reinforcements.”
“Ah, Heraklea! I knew at Heraklea a certain maiden from Colchis, for
whom I would have given all the divorced women of this city, not
excluding Poppæa. But these are old stories. Tell me now, rather, what
is to be heard from the Parthian boundary. It is true that they weary
me every Vologeses of them, and Tiridates and Tigranes,—those
barbarians who, as young Arulenus insists, walk on all fours at home,
and pretend to be human only when in our presence. But now people in
Rome speak much of them, if only for the reason that it is dangerous to
speak of aught else.”
“The war is going badly, and but for Corbulo might be turned to defeat.”
“Corbulo! by Bacchus! a real god of war, a genuine Mars, a great leader,
at the same time quick-tempered, honest, and dull. I love him, even for
this,—that Nero is afraid of him.”
“Corbulo is not a dull man.”
“Perhaps thou art right, but for that matter it is all one. Dulness, as
Pyrrho says, is in no way worse than wisdom, and differs from it in
nothing.”
Vinicius began to talk of the war; but when Petronius closed his eyes
again, the young man, seeing his uncle’s tired and somewhat emaciated
face, changed the conversation, and inquired with a certain interest
about his health.
Petronius opened his eyes again.
Health!—No. He did not feel well. He had not gone so far yet, it is
true, as young Sissena, who had lost sensation to such a degree that
when he was brought to the bath in the morning he inquired, “Am I
sitting?” But he was not well. Vinicius had just committed him to the
care of Asklepios and Kypris. But he, Petronius, did not believe in
Asklepios. It was not known even whose son that Asklepios was, the son
of Arsinoe or Koronis; and if the mother was doubtful, what was to be
said of the father? Who, in that time, could be sure who his own father
was?
Hereupon Petronius began to laugh; then he continued,—“Two years ago,
it is true, I sent to Epidaurus three dozen live blackbirds and a goblet
of gold; but dost thou know why? I said to myself, ‘Whether this helps
or not, it will do me no harm.’ Though people make offerings to the gods
yet, I believe that all think as I do,—all, with the exception,
perhaps, of mule-drivers hired at the Porta Capena by travellers.
Besides Asklepios, I have had dealings with sons of Asklepios. When I
was troubled a little last year in the bladder, they performed an
incubation for me. I saw that they were tricksters, but I said to
myself: ‘What harm! The world stands on deceit, and life is an
illusion. The soul is an illusion too. But one must have reason enough
to distinguish pleasant from painful illusions.’ I shall give command to
burn in my hypocaustum, cedar-wood sprinkled with ambergris, for during
life I prefer perfumes to stenches. As to Kypris, to whom thou hast
also confided me, I have known her guardianship to the extent that I
have twinges in my right foot. But as to the rest she is a good
goddess! I suppose that thou wilt bear sooner or later white doves to
her altar.”
“True,” answered Vinicius. “The arrows of the Parthians have not
reached my body, but a dart of Amor has struck me—unexpectedly, a few
stadia from a gate of this city.”
“By the white knees of the Graces! thou wilt tell me of this at a
leisure hour.”
“I have come purposely to get thy advice,” answered Marcus.
But at that moment the epilatores came, and occupied themselves with
Petronius. Marcus, throwing aside his tunic, entered a bath of tepid
water, for Petronius invited him to a plunge bath.
“Ah, I have not even asked whether thy feeling is reciprocated,” said
Petronius, looking at the youthful body of Marcus, which was as if cut
out of marble. “Had Lysippos seen thee, thou wouldst be ornamenting now
the gate leading to the Palatine, as a statue of Hercules in youth.”
The young man smiled with satisfaction, and began to sink in the bath,
splashing warm water abundantly on the mosaic which represented Hera at
the moment when she was imploring Sleep to lull Zeus to rest. Petronius
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