Imperial Purple | Page 8

ceiling was met by
columns, the walls hidden by panels of gems. On a frieze twelve
pictures, surmounted by the signs of the zodiac, represented the dishes
of the different months. Beneath the bronze beds and silver tables
mosaics were set in imitation of food that had fallen and had not been
swept away. And there, in white ungirdled tunics, the head and neck
circled with coils of amaranth--the perfume of which in opening the
pores neutralizes the fumes of wine--the guests lay, fanned by boys,
whose curly hair they used for napkins. Under the supervision of
butlers the courses were served on platters so large that they covered
the tables; sows' breasts with Lybian truffles; dormice baked in poppies
and honey, peacock-tongues flavored with cinnamon; oysters stewed in
garum--a sauce made of the intestines of fish--sea- wolves from the
Baltic; sturgeons from Rhodes; fig-peckers from Samos; African snails;
pale beans in pink lard; and a yellow pig cooked after the Troan fashion,
from which, when carved, hot sausages fell and live thrushes flew.
Therewith was the mulsum, a cup made of white wine, nard, roses,
absinthe and honey; the delicate sweet wines of Greece; and crusty
Falernian of the year six hundred and thirty-two. As the cups circulated,

choirs entered, chanting sedately the last erotic song; a clown danced
on the top of a ladder, which he maintained upright as he danced,
telling meanwhile untellable stories to the frieze; and host and guests,
unvociferously, as good breeding dictates, chatted through the pauses
of the service; discussed the disadvantages of death, the value of
Noevian iambics, the disgrace of Ovid, banished because of Livia's
eyes.
Such was the Rome of Augustus. "Caesar," cried a mime to him one
day, "do you know that it is important for you that the people should be
interested in Bathylle and in myself?"
The mime was right. The sovereign of Rome was not the Caesar, nor
yet the aristocracy. The latter was dead. It had been banished by
barbarian senators, by barbarian gods; it had died twice, at Pharsalus, at
Philippi; it was the people that was sovereign, and it was important that
that sovereign should be amused--flattered, too, and fed. For thirty
years not a Roman of note had died in his bed; not one but had kept by
him a slave who should kill him when his hour had come; anarchy had
been continuous; but now Rome was at rest and its sovereign wished to
laugh. Made up of every nation and every vice, the universe was
ransacked for its entertainment. The mountain sent its lions, the desert
giraffes; there were boas from the jungles, bulls from the plains, and
hippopotami from the waters of the Nile. Into the arenas patricians
descended; in the amphitheatre there were criminals from Gaul; in the
Forum philosophers from Greece. On the stage, there were tragedies,
pantomimes and farce; there were races in the circus, and in the sacred
groves girls with the Orient in their eyes and slim waists that swayed to
the crotals. For the thirst of the sovereign there were aqueducts, and for
its hunger Africa, Egypt, Sicily contributed grain. Syria unveiled her
altars, Persia the mystery and magnificence of her gods.
Such was Rome. Augustus was less noteworthy; so unnecessary even
that every student must regret Actium, Antony's defeat, the passing of
Caesar's dream. For Antony was made for conquests; it was he who,
fortune favoring, might have given the world to Rome. A splendid, an
impudent bandit, first and foremost a soldier, calling himself a
descendant of Hercules whom he resembled; hailed at Ephesus as
Bacchus, in Egypt as Osiris; Asiatic in lavishness, and Teuton in his
capacity for drink; vomiting in the open Forum, and making and

unmaking kings; weaving with that viper of the Nile a romance which
is history; passing initiate into the inimitable life, it would have been
curious to have watched him that last night when the silence was stirred
by the hum of harps, the cries of bacchantes bearing his tutelary god
back to the Roman camp, while he said farewell to love, to empire and
to life.
Augustus resembled him not at all. He was a colorless monarch; an
emperor in everything but dignity, a prince in everything but grace; a
tactician, not a soldier; a superstitious braggart, afraid of nothing but
danger; seducing women to learn their husband's secrets; exiling his
daughter, not because she had lovers, but because she had other lovers
than himself; exiling Ovid because of Livia, who in the end poisoned
her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of speech, and coarse
of manner--a hypocrite and a comedian in one--so guileful and yet so
stupid that while a credulous moribund ordered the gods to be thanked
that Augustus survived him, the