Marius the Epicurean, vol 2 | Page 9

For three days the body lay in state in the Forum, enclosed in an open
coffin of cedar-wood, on a bed of ivory and gold, in the centre of a sort
of temporary chapel, representing the temple of his patroness Venus
Genetrix. Armed soldiers kept watch around it, while choirs of select
voices relieved one another in the chanting of hymns or monologues
from the great tragedians.
[31] At the head of the couch were displayed the various personal
decorations which had belonged to Verus in life. Like all the rest of
Rome, Marius went to gaze on the face he had seen last scarcely
disguised under the hood of a travelling-dress, as the wearer hurried, at

night-fall, along one of the streets below the palace, to some amorous
appointment. Unfamiliar as he still was with dead faces, he was taken
by surprise, and touched far beyond what he had reckoned on, by the
piteous change there; even the skill of Galen having been not wholly
successful in the process of embalming. It was as if a brother of his
own were lying low before him, with that meek and helpless expression
it would have been a sacrilege to treat rudely.
Meantime, in the centre of the Campus Martius, within the grove of
poplars which enclosed the space where the body of Augustus had been
burnt, the great funeral pyre, stuffed with shavings of various aromatic
woods, was built up in many stages, separated from each other by a
light entablature of woodwork, and adorned abundantly with carved
and tapestried images. Upon this pyramidal or flame-shaped structure
lay the corpse, hidden now under a mountain of flowers and incense
brought by the women, who from the first had had their fondness for
the wanton graces of the deceased. The dead body was surmounted by a
waxen effigy of great size, arrayed in the triumphal ornaments. [32] At
last the Centurions to whom that office belonged, drew near, torch in
hand, to ignite the pile at its four corners, while the soldiers, in wild
excitement, flung themselves around it, casting into the flames the
decorations they had received for acts of valour under the dead
emperor's command.
It had been a really heroic order, spoiled a little, at the last moment,
through the somewhat tawdry artifice, by which an eagle--not a very
noble or youthful specimen of its kind--was caused to take flight amid
the real or affected awe of the spectators, above the perishing remains;
a court chamberlain, according to ancient etiquette, subsequently
making official declaration before the Senate, that the imperial "genius"
had been seen in this way, escaping from the fire. And Marius was
present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by "acclamation,"
muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of low, rhythmical
chant, decreed Caelum--the privilege of divine rank to the departed.
The actual gathering of the ashes in a white cere-cloth by the widowed
Lucilla, when the last flicker had been extinguished by drops of wine;

and the conveyance of them to the little cell, already populous, in the
central mass of the sepulchre of Hadrian, still in all the splendour of its
statued colonnades, were a matter of private or domestic duty; after the
due accomplishment of which Aurelius was at [33] liberty to retire for a
time into the privacy o his beloved apartments of the Palatine. And
hither, not long afterwards, Marius was summoned a second time, to
receive from the imperial hands the great pile of Manuscripts it would
be his business to revise and arrange.
One year had passed since his first visit to the palace; and as he
climbed the stairs to-day, the great cypresses rocked against the sunless
sky, like living creatures in pain. He had to traverse a long subterranean
gallery, once a secret entrance to the imperial apartments, and in our
own day, amid the ruin of all around it, as smooth and fresh as if the
carpets were but just removed from its floor after the return of the
emperor from the shows. It was here, on such an occasion, that the
emperor Caligula, at the age of twenty- nine, had come by his end, the
assassins gliding along it as he lingered a few moments longer to watch
the movements of a party of noble youths at their exercise in the
courtyard below. As Marius waited, a second time, in that little red
room in the house of the chief chamberlain, curious to look once more
upon its painted walls-- the very place whither the assassins were said
to have turned for refuge after the murder--he could all but see the
figure, which in its surrounding light and darkness seemed to him the
most melancholy in the entire history of Rome. He called to