About 18 years ago during a trip to Rome with my wife, who was then pregnant with my son, I visited the room in which the English poet John Keats died of consumption, just off to the left of the Spanish Steps, looking down into the Piazza di Spagna. The year before I visited the house in Hampstead Heath at which he is said to have written, "Ode to a Nightingale."
Later that day we visited his gravesite in the Cimitero degli Inglesi, and read the inscription on his tombstone.
This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a Young English Poet, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.I think we may afterwards have taken a bus, because I remember being vaguely scandalized at the disorder of the ticket process, which was apparently used only by tourists on their way to the catacombs. But at some point we reached the ancient wall of the city, and continued walking through the Porta San Sebastiano, south on the Via Applia in search of an old restaurant at which I desired to have our customary late lunch after a morning of rigorous walking. After a little while on the road we came to a small but very charming church, the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Palmis, but more commonly known as Chiesa del Domine Quo Vadis. I went inside, and to my surprise, this was the place referenced by Henryk Sienkiewicz in his famous book, Quo Vadis.
Old cities and places are full of a mixture of legend and history. I imagine that the story upon which the novel was based was one of those oral traditions that are handed down and embellished over time, not having been codified and fixed into a proper text, which as you may recall is how the Bible was brought together from a myriad of writings and authors.
I have to admit that it was a moving experience, to visit the places where these things are likely to have occurred in whatever particular way. The scoffers have a little less swagger since Heinrich Schliemann found the site of Troy from the text of Homer. It reminds us that Keats, and Peter, and Nero, and Petronius, and so many other figures remembered were real people, making decisions with confusion, worries, concerns, fears, and the rest of the issues that we all have today.
Here is the relevant section from Synkewicz's book.
"About dawn of the following day two dark figures were moving along the Appian Way toward the Campania.It is too bad that it is not read much today, because it is a really charming book. I think it has been made into several movie versions. I liked the one with Klaus Maria Brandauer, although the earlier epic with Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr is more famous and probably more popular. The novel was a worldwide best seller in its day from about 1906 to 1930. I remember at the time I read it in 1968 enjoying it because of the portrayal of T. Petronius, Nero's Arbiter Elegantiae, who is said to have written the first western novel, The Satyricon. Such as I was, the budding classicist and natural scientist, a new modern man as my teacher and mentor would say.
One of them was Nazarius; the other the Apostle Peter, who was leaving Rome and his martyred co-religionists.
The sky in the east was assuming a light tinge of green, bordered gradually and more distinctly on the lower edge with saffron color. Silver-leafed trees, the white marble of villas, and the arches of aqueducts, stretching through the plain toward the city, were emerging from shade. The greenness of the sky was clearing gradually, and becoming permeated with gold. Then the east began to grow rosy and illuminate the Adban Hills, which seemed marvellously beautiful, lily-colored, as if formed of rays of light alone.
The light was reflected in trembling leaves of trees, in the dew-drops. The haze grew thinner, opening wider and wider views on the plain, on the houses dotting it, on the cemeteries, on the towns, and on groups of trees, among which stood white columns of temples.
The road was empty. The villagers who took vegetables to the city had not succeeded yet, evidently, in harnessing beasts to their vehicles. From the stone blocks with which the road was paved as far as the mountains, there came a low sound from the bark shoes on the feet of the two travellers.
Then the sun appeared over the line of hills; but at once a wonderful vision struck the Apostle's eyes. It seemed to him that the golden circle, instead of rising in the sky, moved down from the heights and was advancing on the road. Peter stopped, and asked, --
"See thou that brightness approaching us?"
"I see nothing," replied Nazarius.
But Peter shaded his eyes with his hand, and said after a while,
"Some figure is coming in the gleam of the sun." But not the slightest sound of steps reached their ears. It was perfectly still all around. Nazarius saw only that the trees were quivering in the distance, as if some one were shaking them, and the light was spreading more broadly over the plain. He looked with wonder at the Apostle.
"Rabbi. What ails thee?" cried he, with alarm.
The pilgrim's staff fell from Peter's hands to the earth; his eyes were looking forward, motionless; his mouth was open; on his face were depicted astonishment, delight, rapture.
Then he threw himself on his knees, his arms stretched forward; and this cry left his lips, --
"O Lord! O Lord!"
He fell with his face to the earth, as if kissing some one's feet.
The silence continued long; then were heard the words of the aged man, broken by sobs, --
"Quo vadis, Domine?" (Where are you going, Lord?)
Nazarius did not hear the answer; but to Peter's ears came a sad and sweet voice, which said, --
"If you desert my people, I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time."
The Apostle lay on the ground, his face in the dust, without motion or speech. It seemed to Nazarius that he had fainted or was dead; but he rose at last, seized the staff with trembling hands, and turned without a word toward the seven hills of the city.
The boy, seeing this, repeated as an echo, --
"Quo vadis, Domine?"
"To Rome," said the Apostle, in a low voice.
And he returned.
Paul, John, Linus, and all the faithful received him with amazement; and the alarm was the greater, since at daybreak, just after his departure, praetorians had surrounded Miriam's house and searched it for the Apostle. But to every question he answered only with delight and peace, --
"I have seen the Lord!"
And that same evening he went to the Ostian cemetery to teach and baptize those who wished to bathe in the water of life.
And thenceforward he went there daily, and after him went increasing numbers. It seemed that out of every tear of a martyr new confessors were born, and that every groan on the arena found an echo in thousands of breasts. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad. But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.
When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one, -- happiness and love..."
Quo Vadis, by Henryk Sienkiewicz, 1905
The world turns to such things, but especially during times of suffering and trouble, when the great men and the masters rise up once again and proclaim their dominion. Perhaps it, or some things like it, will have a revival when the madness is once again unleashed, and The New Rome falls, and the New Temple is sacked.
And where is the Emperor Nero now, the lord of the world, but a memory, returned to the earth as the dirt and dust beneath some young child's fingernails, to be plucked out and discarded with a 'tut tut' by an observantly doting mother.
