In Diocletian's Day: A Scene in Spoleto
I
‘So the old man wants to return to power,’ said Diocletian, rolling up a letter and speaking rather to himself than to the officer who brought it.
It was a cool autumn morning, and they were walking side by side along an arcade or corridor which ran the whole length of the front of the new palace, looking west across the sea. For more than two hundred yards the corridor ran, and at either end it was flanked with massive towers. Sixteen of them protected the fortress walls of the huge quadrangle within which the palace was constructed. In the centre of the colonnade stood a spacious entrancegate, with steps leading down to the water, which lapped gently against them. For the bay was never rough, the storms of the Adriatic being warded off by low outlying islands.
Beside the entrance-gate a heavy barge lay at anchor. It had come at great speed from the Riviera, bringing the messenger of Maximian, ex-Emperor like Diocletian himself. Tied to their pivots, the banks of oars still rested on the surface; the crews who had worked the ships were busy with breakfast, or lay sleeping in the newly risen sun.
‘So the old man wants to return to power, and asks me to join with him,’ said Diocletian again; and he stopped in his walk to look meditatively over the sea between the columns. ‘For twenty-one years I ruled the world — I, Diocletian, the slave boy from those Dalmatian hills down yonder. I saved the world — saved it from savages — Goths, Germans, Persians, Parthians, and the rest. Continually, like clouds in storm, they kept pressing down over the sunlit prospect of the Empire, and I drove them back to the dismal regions which they inhabit. All that is worth preserving in mankind I preserved. The mists and obscurities which threatened to envelop the clearest reason of the world I also swept away, as with a health-giving breeze. And now the old man wants me to return and begin all over again! You must rest here, Julianus, for a few days, and I will give Maximian an answer.’
‘All your commands I obey,’ answered the officer; ‘to me you are always Emperor.’
‘Please don’t talk like a courtier,’ said Diocletian, though he bowed with a gratified smile; ‘I’m only a private citizen now — a self-made man enjoying well-earned repose, like any army contractor. And, like most retired speculators, I spend my declining years in planting trees I shall never see grow up, and in building a house I shall not long enjoy. At the best, I can feel the spring return only ten times more. For I suppose I am mortal, although I have long been declared divine.’
He smiled again, and led his guest through a vaulted vestibule, on one side of which stood a great dining-hall, and on the other a library, guest-chambers, baths, and the ex-Emperor’s bedroom and private apartments. The vestibule opened into a broad causeway or street, crossed at the centre by another street running at right angles to it, so that the two divided the quadrangle of the palace inside the surrounding walls into four interior quadrangles of about equal size.
Turning to the right, Diocletian led the way up some steps to a large octagonal building, like a tower with a pointed roof, and pushed open the lofty doors of decorated bronze. In the centre of an empty floor stood a large stone sarcophagus, carved in deep relief with historic scenes — legionaries hewing shaggy ill-armed barbarians in pieces, executioners beheading prisoners like poppies in a row, and on one side an emperor entering Rome in triumph, the standards and the lictors’ rods and axes preceding his chariot, the spoils and long lines of captive kings and queens dragged behind, amid an applauding populace. It represented Diocletian’s own triumph of 303 A.D. — the last triumph ever to climb the Capitoline with the silent Virgin along the Sacred Way.
‘As we were talking of mortality,’ Diocletian said, ‘I thought I would show you the tomb in which my carcass will lie forever when, in the poet’s words, my palsied head descends to heaven.’
Again he smiled, and after contemplating the empty stone box for a while in silence, they turned to go.
‘Observe the architect’s skill,’ said Diocletian. ‘Outside, the mausoleum is octagonal; inside, it is circular. That is thought a clever piece of construction, and you can make what symbol you like of it — the circle of eternity at rest within the points of this angular life, or what you will. But these mysteries have no attraction for a rough old soldier like me. Look rather at the frieze running round the exterior — a divine creature, you see, hunting boars and wild goats. That’s more to my taste. I hold by the ancient gods as much as possible — partly, I suppose, because I am one.’
He expected his companion to laugh, but Julianus only bowed, as if at a commonly acknowledged truth.
‘I can’t quite say why I had such a lot of stuff brought from Egypt,’ Diocletian continued. ‘All those granite and marble columns are Egyptian, and so are those sphinxes on each side of the doors, all covered with incomprehensible writing! They are said to be twice as old as Rome. A woman’s face and breasts on a lion’s body with eagle’s wings! I suppose it all meant something to those old fellows. A queer country is Egypt! Like a huge coffin! And the priests worship queer gods with the heads of hawks, cats, dogs, calves, crocodiles, and heaven knows what! I’d like to ask them a question or two. But it’s my belief that men and women will believe anything, provided it is ridiculous or impossible.
‘You see those two statues in the pediment over the door,’ he went on; ‘one is myself, the other is my wife Prisca, the ex-Empress. When I married her she was a beautiful woman, complacent and devout; born just to worship the genial goddess of production, the joy of gods and men. But now she is wrapped in fantastic superstitions, — a kind of Jewess, they tell me, — and has carried off our daughter Valeria with her. Heaven knows to what fate they are wandering through the world, now that I can no longer protect them. They are too distinguished to be fortunate.’
‘When last I heard of them, they were in the East,’ said Julianus.
‘Howling over the crumbling ruins of Jerusalem, probably,’ Diocletian replied, with regretful bitterness. ‘Men are idiotic and swinish, but for real mania you must look to women. Notice that sarcophagus there, too, I had it brought here because of the beautiful workmanship: the story of Hippolytus and Phædra — another instance of feminine madness! The thing is over a century old. I ’ ve forgotten whose bones moulder inside; someone who was happy enough to live under the Antonines, I suppose, and saw the Empire complete and calm and uncorrupted. And there’s a bust of Nero on that pedestal. What a fantastic man he was! And yet attractive, and capable of religious zeal. But now I should like to show you the temple of more genuine gods.’
He led the way across a peristyle or roofless colonnade of elegant arches, up the approach to an oblong temple, Corinthian in design, where they were met by a white-robed priest. He bowed profoundly to the ex-Emperor, extending his arms with hands turned down, and Diocletian answered the salutation with similar precision. The great doors were thrown open by acolytes who served the temple — sweeping the floor, shaking out the curtains, and keeping the altar-fires alight.
In the obscurity of the interior, into which a dubious light, penetrated only through thin slabs of marble in the roof, the visitor perceived a reduced imitation of the seated Zeus of Olympia, and the statue of a man in ancient Greek clothing, holding a scroll in one hand and a staff entwined with serpents in the other.
‘As this is my only temple,’ Diocletian said, speaking low, ‘I chose to dedicate it to the gods of Heaven and Health combined — the greatest and the most useful of gods. My title of Jovius almost compelled me to select the one; and indeed what greater god could one worship than him who rules the sky and directs the course of the firmaments revolving round the earth and the Empire? But my personal adoration is especially due to Æsculapius; for though I am divine and immortal, where should I be now but for his aid when terrible sickness befell me a few years ago? People who saw me even when I was recovering did not recognize the soldier and savior of the world in the shrunken and enfeebled figure to which sickness had reduced me. I vowed at that time daily to worship the Healing God, and indeed I was engaged in his service as I walked the cool length of the esplanade when your ship put in. Other exercises I perform in his honor, as you shall presently see. For what is life — what is the life even of Divine Being — without the blessedness of health?’
Taking a little incense from the priest, Diocletian raised both hands before the statues in turn and dropped it upon the smouldering fires of each altar. Tiny orange flames shot up from each, and a thin column of blue smoke arose. Julianas repeated the action before the statue of Jove alone, and as the ex-Emperor waited for him to perform the other sacrifice, he said, ‘I have no need of healing, being well already.’
‘Oh, youth, youth!’ laughed Diocletian as he turned to leave the temple; and then he sighed and said little more as he conducted his guest around the rest of the palace buildings — the stables, the galleries of cells for slaves, the apart ments of the stewards and cooks. Only when they reached the northwest quadrangle, which was built as barracks for the bodyguard, he said in his tone of sardonic irony, —-
‘Yes, a thousand lusty men-at-arms are still required to preserve one life for a few years more. How many of the Cræsars have died except by violence? Hardly half a dozen since Augustus, three centuries ago. Conquest has not saved a Cæsar; public service has not saved; still less has virtue. Good or evil, they have shared the same hideous fate. Slaughtered, murdered, stabbed, poisoned, torn in pieces, one after another they have gone — they have gone. Nor is abdication a defense. Fear lurks in ambush always; and yet, though life is none too sweet, we cling to it.’
Ashamed of an emotion thus revealed, he turned smilingly to Julianus and said, ‘Now you have seen the pleasant resting-place I have constructed for the peace of old age. The sun is growing hot in spite of autumn. The midday meal will be served you, and you must rest for a few hours. This afternoon we will drive round the neighborhood. There is a festival at Salona to-day. There will be the usual games and some necessary executions — no spectacle such as you young men-about-town are accustomed to in the city, but just a simple entertainment good enough for us country folk.’
II
Through the breathless hours of noon the palace lay silent, basking in sunlight. Even the vast gray blocks of the outer walls glared in the heat, and the newly wrought marble of the colonnades and temple steps shone with dazzling whiteness. Except for the sentries at the four gates and on the corner towers, all the soldiers, household servants, and slaves slept or lay prostrate in the shade — all but two of Diocletian’s secretaries, who, under his own direction, were cutting upon the marble wall of his inmost chamber a map of the Empire, the parts of which were variously colored according to the dates of their acquisition or recent recovery. The regions which he had himself rescued from the barbarians were dyed with brilliant purple.
But toward four o’clock there was a stir throughout the palace. The guard was changed, servants moved to and fro on the streets, and presently a covered carriage drawn by six horses stood waiting before the ex-Emperor’s portico. Diocletian entered it with his guest and drove slowly down the carefully paved causeway to the Golden Gate in the centre of the northern wall. Passing through the tunnel of its deep and vaulted entrance, the carriage emerged upon a broad road, lined with young cypress trees on either side; and directly the barriers of the fortress palace were left, an open country lay extended far in front, till rough lines of bare and rocky mountains closed the view.
Like one escaping into free air, Diocletian leaned back with a deep breath of relief, and with eyes fixed on the mountains he said, ‘I am getting on fairly well with my map, but have little satisfaction in it. We talk about the Empire of the World, but what do we know of the world? Look at those mountains. I was reared among them, only a few days’ journey farther south. They are my native country, but what do I know of the lands behind them? They stretch away to the Danube and the Euxine; ridge after ridge of stony mountains, line after line of watercourses opening upon slips of plain, where outlandish people build little huts or pitch tents of skin, always on the move, always robbing and killing each other, speaking unintelligible and inhuman languages, and called by idle names which mean nothing at all. How shall I entitle that country on a map? One is tired of writing “Land Unknown” all round the limits of our world.’
‘I once traveled along the great road which Rome built from Dyrrachium through such an unknown region,’ said Julianus. ‘We crossed terrible mountains and passed two big lakes. All was savage till we escaped through the ruined home of ancient Alexander to Thessalonica, and so to the city of the Bosphorus.’
‘And beyond that,’ Diocletian continued, ‘stood Nicomedia, where I once thought of erecting a new capital for the Empire. But the superstitious natives twice set fire to my palace after I destroyed their temple there, and I used that splendid site only to abdicate in despair. And beyond Asia lies Mesopotamia and Persia and the gates of India, which your ancient Alexander actually reached. But beyond those frontiers, what do we know? I have stood on mountain heights and looking eastward have seen again range after range of giant mountains, breadths of desert interminable, and unknown waters. You remember what some old Greek poet told about the wanderers of Asia, and people who pitch beside the lake at the edge of the world, and spearmen watching like eagles from peaks above the gulf of nothingness. But as I stood there, I saw the world’s edge was not reached, and there was no gulf of nothingness before me, but always land, and land, and lands unknown.’
‘No doubt the surrounding world is larger than people used to think,’ said Julianus. ‘But, after all, our world gathered about this lovely sea, so full of glorious memories, is the only world that counts. We need n’t trouble ourselves with those dwellers in outer Cimmerian darkness.’
‘Yes, but we must trouble ourselves,’ Diocletian replied impatiently, ‘or they will trouble us. I’ve seen them out there upon the Eastern confines -— tall brown men with faces like hawks; tall brown women too, large-eyed and athletic as Zenobia. And I’ve seen hordes of hideous creatures — dwarfish, having slits for eyes, and long arms like apes. And who knows what strange monsters Africa may beget — ludicrous, black, inhuman? No one has yet penetrated the farthest wilds of Britain, or the islands west of it. But I have seen shaggy Germans beyond the Rhine, shaggy Scythians beyond the Danube. Innumerable they seemed. Mow them down by thousands, and next year there are thousands more, waiting for the sword. And beyond cold and misty seas dwell the Hyperboreans, from among whom the Goths descended upon us like a deluge of ice, devastating those bright cities of Asia, pillaging Thessalonica, Ephesus, and even Athens — Athens herself.’
He paused, overwhelmed by the vision of those countless hordes.
‘Little more than a century ago,’ he continued, ‘how secure and quiet the Empire lay! If peace was broken, it was usually broken by civil war. At the worst Rome then fought Rome. The victory was Roman, and it did not matter to the Empire who was Cæsar. Men went unconcernedly about their business, hardly conscious of laws which stood firm and unquestioned behind them, the stronger because unnoticed. The inland sea was winged with merchant ships, always passing to and fro. Life passed in beautiful cities, or among the isolated villas which gladdened the shores of the province, and of Egypt, Asia, and Greece; to say nothing of pleasant Italy with her bays and rivers sliding under ancient walls. “Glory to thee, Saturnian land, great mother of fruits, great mother of men! ” as the old poet sang. Then decent people could lay out their course of years as they pleased, beautifying their homes, pursuing the arts, and cultivating their minds or their gardens without thought or care. Under time-honored forms, the established gods were reasonably worshiped. New-fangled notions were regarded with smiling incredulity or tolerant contempt, and from birth to acquiescent old age no sensible being suffered a disturbing thought, or aimed at greater happiness than the hope of a to-morrow repeating to-day.
‘But, my dear Julianus, how appalling has been the change! From every side an ignorant barbarism threatens to engulf that calm and placid world. Close beyond every frontier those huge clouds of savages are gathered, waiting to burst with inundation over all that Romans mean by the State, Civility, and Manners. For a few years I kept them back as Æolus once restrained the hurricanes of storm. For a few years I redeemed the world and renewed the Empire’s life. But our peace cannot last. Close before us I see an age of tumult and unceasing war. Not an age, but ages following ages, during which Roman public life and civilized daily existence will disappear, perhaps, even from memory.
‘Was it not time, then, that I turned from a ruining world to build my palace, and for my final years to be still? You remember what the old Persian said: “ The worst torture man can suffer is to have many thoughts and no power.” I was unable to avert the evil I foresaw. We stand at the end of an age — the age of Rome. It has been a noble and beneficent age, blessing the heart and summit of the world. Egypt was not so great, nor was Assyria. Their ages passed; the age of Rome is passing now, and before mankind lies a whirlpool of savage obscurity.’
‘It is to save mankind,’ said Julianus, ‘that my master Maximian calls on you to return.’
Diocletian made no answer. The carriage was entering the streets of a large and beautiful town, built beside a deep inlet of the Adriatic.
‘Here we are in Salona,’ he said, rousing himself. ‘Is n’t it a splendid situation ? I intend to make it the capital of Dalmatia. You observe that I am strengthening the fortifications. Look at that mighty new wall! I am building that against the barbarians. Barbarians! as if walls could keep out either barbarians or care or death!’
III
Diocletian descended at the gate of the large amphitheatre, from which the shouts of the audience could be heard. As he and Julianus entered the imperial seats, the noise was hushed, and the spectators rose in silent reverence to the savior of civilization. Even the gladiators paused in a mock engagement and saluted. Diocletian settled himself with deliberation upon a kind of throne, and placed on his head a diadem, retained for public occasions as a memorial of former greatness. He signaled with his hand, and the games proceeded.
There was nothing unusual in the programme. The amphitheatre was small — barely seventy yards long and barely fifty yards across. Within this narrow space trained athletes exhibited their strength and skill; gladiators contested with blunted swords, or with nets and tridents; wild bulls were incited to gore each other; strange animals imported from Africa at Diocletian’s own expense — giraffes, hippopotami, zebras, and apes — were crowded together in a terrified herd, while the audience screamed to increase their panic, and were convulsed with laughter at their awkward movements, their bewildered faces, and wild efforts to escape. When negroes with long whips had driven them back to their stalls, there was an interval during which slaves cleaned the arena and covered it with fresh sand, while the spectators drank from wine-flasks and devoured the provisions they had brought with them in bags.
‘The populace is awaiting the top of the climax,’ said Diocletian, looking round upon the crowded tiers with amused toleration. ‘After all, death gives the common mind its keenest emotion; you might almost say its one touch of poetry. To-day they celebrate a special sacrifice to Mars, and there are military executions in his honor. I take no pleasure in such things; I have seen too many deaths. No death can interest me now — except perhaps my own,’ he added, with his characteristic smile.
‘Let us go then,’ said Julianus.
‘Oh, no! I must see the end,’ Diocletian answered wearily. ‘The people would be hurt if we went. They are only carrying out one of my own decrees, and “who wishes the end, wishes the means,” as the jurists say. Besides, you know old Martial’s epigram — “Cato goes out from the theatre. Why, then, did he come? Was it that he might go out?” But here come the criminals. First there is a pack of deserters, murderers, brigands, and malefactors in general, caught in this neighborhood or threatening the highways through the mountains.’
From one end of the arena a squadron of ten men, armed as Roman legionaries, entered. They halted in single rank opposite the ex-Emperor, raised their short swords in salute, and clashed them upon their iron shields. The gate at the other end of the arena opened, and out swarmed a mob of thirty beings, leaping and shouting and brandishing stout spears and gleaming knives. They were decked like savages, with wigs of long fair hair, all matted and tangled, tunics and kilts of cowhide, bare legs, and oval shields of cowhide too. Without a pause, they rushed in a confused mass upon the supposed legionaries, who rapidly wheeled right and stood shoulder to shoulder in line to confront them. At the clash of the meeting forces the amphitheatre stood up and gasped with excitement.
At once the work of killing began. Swords struck with edge and point. Spears were thrust into the joints of armor. Daggers stabbed at throats. Within a few seconds, dead and wounded fell. Arms and hands were sliced off. The sinews of bare legs were severed. One head and then another and another rolled to the edge of the sanded oval. Screams of anguish mingled with the applause. The sand was stained with great patches of blood, bright red, crimson, and brown. The criminals who remained standing tripped over the bodies of the fallen.
Within ten minutes only four of the legionaries and one burlesque barbarian survived. Slowly the four edged him back to one end of the arena, until they held him surrounded at the gate. Leaping upon him from right and left they clung to his arms while one quietly cut his throat, and the spectacle was over. The triumphant four saluted Diocletian, and received their pardon.
‘This form of execution’ the ex-Emperor observed to his guest, ' is a device of my own. It gives the worst criminal some small chance of his life. Besides, it encourages recruiting, for the legionaries always come off better than the barbarians, and some save their lives. The sight of blood and conflict is wholesome, too. It checks enervation and effeminacy. And, after all, it is pleasanter to fight for one’s life than be slaughtered like a sheep.
‘But now,’ he added, looking down on the arena again, ‘we shall be compelled to witness another execution. These are traitors who refuse to fight and actually prefer being slaughtered without resistance.’
Two grown men, a youth of about eighteen, and a woman were pushed out from one of the doors, the keepers of the arena thrusting at them from behind with long poles lipped with iron points. They were dressed in the ordinary summer clothes of the respectable middleclass. The woman wore a girdle of yellow silk, and her black hair was tied with a fillet of the same color. The youth held her by the hand, and all four walked slowly into the midst of the arena, with eyes uplifted to the open sky. Attendants followed, carrying a wooden statue of Mars, which they placed in the centre of the arena, and withdrew.
Straining their heads forward, the spectators watched what was about to happen. Taking one step toward the statue, the elder of the two men spat in its face, and in a loud voice uttered the words, ‘ Get thee behind me, Satan! ’
A yell of execration rose from the crowded amphitheatre. All sprang to their feet, gesticulating, and shouting for death.
‘I feared the experiment would be useless,’ Diocletian said, regretfully. ‘The obstinacy of superstition surpasses reason. The offense is a crime against the Mars of Rome. Those two men are centurions who threw down their arms refusing to fight for the Empire’s safety. The youth refused the military oath because his superstition commanded its followers not to bind themselves by swearing nor to resist evil. The woman has been added for propagating the same treason to the State.’
Amid the storm of clamor, Julianus could hardly hear the words. His eyes were fixed on the heavy barrier of the opposite gate. It was raised. Two young lions and a leopard bounded upon the sand, and then stood still, bewildered by the light and noise. The two lions stooped to sniff the corpses still stretched in uncouth attitudes upon the scene of death. But the leopard, fixing his eyes upon the woman, cautiously advanced and crouched down for the spring. Instantly the youth snatched a bloody sword from the hand of a dead legionary and plunged it into her body low between her breasts. With a cry she fell. At the sight of the spouting blood, the leopard sprang, tore open her garment with one scratch of his claws, fastened his teeth in her side and with half-closed eyes drank in ecstasy. Absorbed in the pleasure, he was an easy prey. With the dripping sword the youth struck once more, and the wild beast rolled over dead beside the naked form.
The spectators rocked with laughter. They yelled the obscenities common to mankind. They shouted admiration, too. Some called upon Diocletian to pardon the youth.
But it was too late for pardon. A lion sprang. The youth, still grasping the sword, made no resistance, and by one blow of a terrible paw his throat was torn out. One of the older men fell to the onslaught of the other lion, and the second centurion remained standing alone. ‘Depart in peace, most Christian souls!’ he cried, raising his hands. But while he spoke, a daring gladiator crept stealthily across the arena, seized him from behind, bowed his body down as if in mock obeisance to the gods, and struck off his head so that it fell at the statue’s feet. Again the audience shouted with pleasure and applause.
‘That is the end of our humble festivity,’ said Diocletian, rising. ‘Now we may go without offense.’
The delighted crowd rose and cheered the ex-Emperor as he withdrew, saluting him with the title of Divus and Jovius. Looking back from the gateway, Julianus saw the bloodstained arena littered with dead bodies, and the two lions snarling with jealous satisfaction over their unwonted and delightful food.
IV
The air was now pleasantly cool, and the sun was setting in lines of orange and crimson clouds over the Adriatic.
‘Drive slowly round by the garden,’ Diocletian said to the coachman; and as the heavy carriage began to move, he turned again to Julianus. ‘Such performances add variety to provincial life,’ he observed, ‘and prevent the agriculturists from flocking to the city. The female prisoner was condemned also for persistently preaching the rites of an inhuman love likely to undermine our legitimate matrimony and hinder natural procreation. These heated and orgiastic mysteries are continually sprouting in the East, like poisonous growths on steaming dunghills. In olden times those Asiatics worshiped Astarte and Cybele. Mythras came more recently to delude emotional minds, and now there is this.
‘However, as I told you, it was merely for refusing to serve, or to continue service, in the army that the youth and the two deserters were executed. No more unpardonable treason to Rome could be imagined than a refusal to fight in her defense. These pitiful wretches enjoy the peace and splendor of Rome, but will not move a finger to protect or extend either. The City, the State, the Empire, are nothing to them. Such people brood only over their own condition and the preservation of their souls. They undertake no public duties. They refuse to act as judges or magistrates, and even their pleasures are private and selfishly concealed. They appear to live in a kind of ecstatic hysteria, scorning reason, avoiding social life, and looking forward with joyous expectation to the speedy destruction, not only of our Roman world, but of the whole human race. For the protection of humanity, I resolved some five or six years ago to extirpate their desperate superstition, and in that, at all events, I shall succeed.’
'You are right,’ said Julianus; ‘if such treasonable opinions spread, no state — not even the smallest city — could survive in this world of perpetual conflict. And the best way of silencing pernicious opinions is to silence those who hold them.’
‘If those unhappy criminals had but shown a little reasonable compliance,’ Diocletian continued, ‘they need not have suffered. They might, for instance, have displayed a becoming reverence for myself,’ he added, smiling once more. 'I make no pretensions to extraordinary virtue, but my private record compares well with my namesake Jove’s.
‘As you know,’ he went on, ‘I think it best to maintain the ancient public gods. These new religions are too much occupied with personal states of mind, or else with oracles and soothsayers and the movements of stars and planets. What do the stars know about, us, or what do they care? Solemn old philosophers used to say the stars twinkled in their pity for mankind, and the music of the spheres could actually be heard if we listened long enough. My friend, it is all childish folly. Not even Jews believe it.
'Then there was worthy old Marcus — divine, but still worthy; he always kept one eye turned inward upon what he called his soul. As though his soul mattered! He helped to build some decent towns, like this of Salona here; and he cleared the frontiers beyond the Danube. But all the time he kept grubbing into his own state of mind, his conduct and thoughts, calling them up daily for examination. That is not the way to greatness. He felt a kind of sympathy for all the world. He used to quote young Pliny’s saying that, when one poor mortal assists another poor mortal, there is God. My dear Julianus, the gods are not pitiful and tender and effeminate. The gods are soldierly and civic powers. It was they who built the walls of Rome, and extended the empire of law and reason into the realms of barbarous and obscene night.’
The carriage stopped at a large square enclosure surrounded by stone walls.
‘Enough of these solemn abstractions,’ said Diocletian, with relief. ‘Here we are at my garden. Now I can show you something genuine —a real public service to the State.’
Within the walls a vegetable and fruit garden was spread out in ordered rows and rectangular patches. Slaves were digging the rows and watering the roots by a system of channels arranged with sluices and locks.
‘Is n’t it magnificent?’ Diocletian cried. ‘Look at those fennels, those onion-beds and cabbages, all in line! Just like cohorts drawn up for battle. And there are apple trees and plums, and a good big patch of vineyard for my special wine which I drink for fear of gout. I come here to dig and prune nearly every day. It is healthy exercise, and much more delightful than ruling the Empire. You can tell your master Maximian that! And by the way, when I write my answer, remind me to put in a word of congratulation upon the marriage of Maximian’s daughter to Constantine, son of my old friend and successor Constantius. He seems a promising youth. They tell me that he is one of the Cæsars already. But how many emperors exactly are there now? Do you suppose I care to become just one more among the number — I, who saved the Empire once?’
The carriage bore them to the Western or Iron Gate, and when they reentered the palace the evening was almost dark, and the larger stars were already shining.
The town of Spoleto is now built inside Diocletian’s palace and extends beyond the walls. His mausoleum was converted into a cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin about three hundred years after Diocletian’s death. The High Altar marks the spot where his sarcophagus stood, and side altars sanctify the relics of Salona’s first martyr and of her first bishop. The temple of Jove and Æsculapius is now the baptistry, and the font, designed in the Lombardic style, has for six centuries served for the christening of the city’s babies.
If you pass out through the Iron Gate and climb the steep and rocky height west of the town, you will discover a large stone cross on the summit, and may read an inscription cut on the base in fine Roman characters: ‘ JESUS CHRISTUS DEUS HOMO VIVIT REGNAT IMPERAT.’