Quo Vadis

Preface

There are two requisites in a good translation. First, it should be good English. Second, it should be loyal to the original. These two requisites are in fact one. For the translation of such a masterpiece as “Quo Vadis” it cannot be loyal to the spirit of the original unless it be good English. But loyalty to the spirit must frequently involve disloyalty to the letter. The famous Portuguese hand-book known to us as “English as She is Spoke,” is sufficient evidence of the betrayal of sense which may result from too strenuous an attempt at verbal fidelity.

This translation, therefore, aims to be faithful to both English and Polish. The needless iterations which are legitimate in Polish have been dropped as illegitimate in English. Thus a large number of “ands,” “buts,” and “meanwhiles”’ have been weeded out, as well as all such phrases as “‘so saying,” or “with these words,” which retard the reader without enlightening him. ‘He began to do so and so” has been altered into “He did so and so.” More important still, Polish idioms and locutions, meaningless to English ears, have been rendered into the nearest possible equivalents with the same object of aiding the reader, and the Latin terms have been carefully translated in the text itself.

No one but a Latin scholar is familiar with such words as “epilatores,” “curriculum,” “fauces,” “frigidarium,” “peractum est,’ “habet,” “innoxa corpora,’ and many others that are sprinkled throughout the Polish original. They are stumbling blocks in the reader’s path, to whom the distraction of even a foot-note or an intercalary translation are a drawback.. [hey mar the reader’s pleasure. The main object of this translation is to bring this great masterpiece within the comprehension of all readers. Vv vl PREFACE

But absolute accuracy to the spirit has also been aimed at. Many serious, and even vital errors in the current translations have been eliminated, and words and phrases have been restored to their true meaning in the clearest English attainable. It is the hope of the translators that there is not one sentence which the lay reader would have to pause at or stumble over.

Introduction

In the midst of the World War the newspapers: and literary reviews gave brief space, on a certain date, to the fact that Henryk Sienkiewicz, the Polish author, had passed away. To most readers who chanced to notice the item, he was recalled only as the author of “Quo Vadis”; and even yet we of America do not grasp the real significance of his work as an awakener of Polish liberty.

The future fame of Sienkiewicz will rest upon this factor as well as his ability to write historical fiction. In the latter field he bids fair to take verv high rank. He is to Poland what Walter Scott is to England; Hugo to France; or Cervantes to Spain. Says Charles Harvey Genung in the “Warner Library,” “With all the confidence that we can ever attach to human judgment upon a living author, Sienkiewicz may be pronounced the greatest creative genius in the field of fiction at the end of the nineteenth century.”’” Mr. Genung, however, does not base his opinion upon “Quo Vadis,” but upon the author’s great trilogy of Polish stories—epic in their sweep and vision—‘“With Fire and Sword,” “The Deluge,’ and “Pan Michael.” It is as a recreator of Poland’s past that the author himself would doubtless prefer to be remembered.

The facts of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s life are somewhat meager; no authorized biography has yet appeared. The scene and date of his birth are in dispute. He was born in Lithuania in 1846, or in Poland proper in 1848. At an early age his family removed to Warsaw, where he attended the lower school or ‘“‘“Gymnasium,” and completed his education in the University of Warsaw. He won a degree in literature but did not attain high rank as a student. He preferred to read historical novels, such vil vill INTRODUCTION as those of Scott and Dumas. Even then his literary bent was forming, and he never aspired to any other career than literature. .

For the next few years he led a roving life and tried his hand at journalism, first at Warsaw, where he edited the Niwa, then for a time at Petrograd, and next as a correspondent in France. About the age of thirty he came to America—a fact which is not generally known— and thought of making this his home. He came over from France with Madame Helena Modjeska and her husband and a few other compatriots. The group settled near Los Angeles in a community which they called “Anno Luni.” It was a sort of “Brook Farm” experiment, where all were to live from a common pocket-book ; but like other such communal tests it was doomed to failure. Modjeska studied English and went on the American stage; while Sienkiewicz returned to Poland. While in California he had written travel letters to a Polish journal, over the pen name of Litwos.

At thirty-six he was still comparatively unknown, but seemingly content. He preferred to lead a wandering life, to observe, to absorb. He said of himself: “TI think there must be some gypsy blood in my veins’”— such was his restless nature. But he never idled in his travels; always was there the seeing eye backed by a remarkably retentive memory. During this formative period he wrote short stories, one of the best of which was a humorous skit, “No Man is a Prophet in His Own Country.” “TI toiled at short stories until I could write a good one, before I attempted longer productions,” he says.

With the year 1872 he definitely essayed larger authorship. He contributed a series of critical articles to a Polish review. The next year his first novel, “In Vain,” appeared. Its title may have presaged its lack of success. “Hania,” slightly more successful came out in 1874. Seven years later Sienkiewicz married a Lithuanian lady who is spoken of as being both beautiful and talented. She urged him to begin his series of Polish historical

INTRODUCTION ix novels and aided him with the ground work. Their wedded life was unfortunately cut short by her death in 1885, but not before the first of this trilogy, “With Fire and Sword,” appeared. The two remaining titles, “The Deluge,” and “Pan Michael” were completed by 1888.

We in America, who are accustomed to link the name of Sienkiewicz with “Quo Vadis” only can scarcely appreciate the profound effect exerted upon his countrymen by these novels. Nearly three centuries before, Poland had been laid waste. Her territory had been partitioned among Russia, Germany, and Austria. She had been ground under the heel of the oppressor, not daring to call her soul her own. Efforts had been made repeatedly to stamp out the Polish language. Anything savoring of native propaganda was rigidly censored. At such a time as this, these powerful stories of Poland’s struggle for freedom in the past came like a trumpet call. The pen of Sienkiewicz was worth legions of soldiers. At one bound he attained front rank among their writers, a worthy successor to Mickiewicz of some thirty years before.

Many are the tales told of Poland’s efforts to keep alive her national spirit and literature, in the troubled days before the World War. The strictures of Russia were particularly zealous against them, and Polish writers, publishers and book-dealers were always under suspicion. An ingenious theory of their methods is propounded by a recent writer in the International Book Review, who says: “A Polish publisher can entertain his American guest by the hour with stories of how he worked the literary ‘underground’ in his early days, keeping Polish books in circulation in spite of the rigorous watchfulness of the Russian police. But there was another and an even more venturesome way of outwitting the alien censor —what might be called the system of double entendre. Any Pole will point out for you to-day dozens of instances where the Polish soul continued to speak to the nation by this means, in spite of the hawk-eye of Russian, x INTRODUCTION

Prussian or Austrian officialdom. Krasinski’s classic tragedy, ‘Iridion,’ is one of the most famous of these: in this drama the tyrant Rome is really the tyrant Russia. In Slowacki’s ‘Grave of Agamemnon,’ the exiled poet, beholding the ruins of Greece, sings really of his mother country. Mickiewicz, in his ‘Konrad Wallenrod,’ told a story which every Pole perfectly understood; it was published in Moscow under the very nose of the Muscovite, all its burning Polish sentiments unwittingly approved and even applauded by that ponderous selfdeceiver.

“But—to the American, at least—perhaps the most striking of all the examples of camouflage in Polish literature is Sienkiewicz’s ‘Quo Vadis.’ In this famous novel of ancient Rome, known the world over and translated into more foreign tongues than any other book except the Bible, what is it that the author really pictures in the ‘underground’ life of the persecuted Christians, and the heroic struggles of Ursus the Sarmatian, who conquers the bull in the arena and saves the virgin Lygia from destruction? It is really the story of Poland, told in hidden allegory and understood by the Poles, no matter how little others suspect its significance. The key to it is Ursus, ‘the Sarmatian,’ Sarmatian being only another name for Pole, but one lost in the obscurities of antiquity. Cesar and the bull are obvious figures of Poland’s oppressors ; Lygia is as obviously the spirit of Poland, the soul of Polish nationality preserved through the strength and heroism of Polish manhood. It was this infinite ingenuity of the Polish poets and novelists, finding a thousand expressions in allegory, guarded word and veiled meaning, that gave rise to the classic Russian warning, ‘Never trust a Pole!’ ”’

This theory of “Quo Vadis” is, as we have said, ingenious but it is hardly plausible. The allegory if such is too far-fetched; there are too many elements which no stretch of the imagination could prove analogous. “Quo Vadis” dealt with a far mightier theme than the political woes of Poland. It was concerned

INTRODUCTION x]

with the foundation of the Christian Church itself. Its theme was the struggle of ancient Paganism against the Cross of Christ.

However, before “Quo Vadis’’ appeared, in 1896; two other Polish tales of intense realism had come from the author’s now teeming pen; “Without Dogma,” and “Children of the Soil.” While they strengthened his popularity at home, it remained for the tale of Rome in the days of Nero to carry his fame beyond the bounds of Poland and make him a world figure in literature.

Other books followed: “Knights of the Cross,’ in 1900: “On the Field of Glory,” in 1904: “Whirl- Pools,” in 1908; and “Through Death and Wilderness,” in 1912, which was his last. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1905. Further literary efforts were hampered by advancing years and the outbreak of the War. He did not live to see the emancipation of his native land, of which he had so fondly dreamed, but he may have visioned its dawn.

At the outbreak of hostilities he went to Geneva where with other distinguished exiles—Paderewski, world pianist and later Premier of Poland, Jean de Reszke, the greatest tenor of his day, and Marcella Sembrich, prima donna of opera,—he labored for the cause of Polish relief. He was President of their Council of Relief. This was his sole occupation to the day of his death, November 16, 1916.

Before the War, he had been as in youth a world traveller. His home in the winter was Warsaw; and in the summer he had a place high up in the Carpathian Mountains—chiefly for the sake of his two children, to whom he had been deeply attached-after the early death of their mother. But he was liable at a moment’s notice to set out on a journey, to Rome, to Greece, to Egypt, to the Orient. He was in its broadest sense a citizen of the world, and at home anywhere. On one occasion he went on a big-game hunt to Africa. He was a lover of scenery, sport, and adventure ; but chiefly he liked to study peoples. He held himself aloof from society and hated xii INTRODUCTION to be lionized, but he was not a hermit or a misanthrope. He had a deep regard for all mankind.

When on his travels he made extensive notes which he would bring back home for digesting. He was accustomed to write four or five hours at a stretch, smoking strong cigars the while, in the mornings, and devote the later hours of the day to relaxation or study. He had no secretary but wrote all his manuscripts by hand and in red ink, with little or no correction. “I do my own revising in my brain as I walk,” he once said. He actually wrete “Cuo Vadis” within one year—a work of 225,000 words, or the length of three ordinary novels. But this does not comprise the months of study and firsthand observation which had gone before. He did not describe [Rome as a Pole or as some passive spectator. He was for the nonce a Roman citizen living in the first century and describing events with the assuredness of an eye-witness.

When we read “Quo Vadis,” we personally enter the Court of Nero; we wander through the streets of ancient Rome; we visit its markets, temples, and amphitheatres. We witness the burning of the imperial city and stand beside the actor-Emperor as he composes and sings hymns in honor of the mighty conflagration; then we follow Peter and Paul through the Trans-Tiber, and behold the sufferings of the persecuted Christians. te is not a mere transcript of history, a faithful record of events, but life itself.

Such is the background of a tale so tremendous in its sweep as to defy any brief analysis. It is a cross-section of human history at a critical epoch. Its motif far transcends the romance around which it is written. Lygia, the persecuted heroine, we feel is only a lay figure; she typifies the universal trial and suffering at the hands of Nero. Both she and Vinitius, her devoted lover, must inevitably become merely types. The real hero of the book is the splendid Petronius, the Arbiter of Elegance, he who could live like a prince and die with a smile on his lips and a jest on his mouth, like a Stoic. Literature

INTRODUCTION xiii affords few figures finer than this. And almost as compelling is that of Chilo Chilonides, philosopher, rascal, liar, spy, sycophant, apparently rotten to the core, who yet could die redeemed.

Nothing short of amazing, also, is the erudition displayed by Sienkiewicz in the construction of this story. He knows ancient Rome, its palaces, hovels, temples, markets, and maze of streets as intimately as his own Warsaw. He does not generalize; he names and describes every location with the minuteness of personal familiarity. Do Cesar and his Court go to Antium? Here as elsewhere Sienkiewicz is also at home, pointing out every village along the way. It is such meticulous attention to details which lifts the story far above the level of the ordinary novel and gives it undoubted claim to immortality. It recreates for us an historical epoch in a more unforgettable way than Gibbon’s “Decline and iaillem

Says one anonymous critic: “Whether he touches upon some problem of art or religion or modern ethics, whether he deals with the history of a past epoch or the archeological details of the first century, he has mastered his subject as far as human knowledge can master it, and is able to touch and transfigure it with new light.” And. again: “We know of no one except Shakespeare and Goethe, who has drawn so many and such varying types; and we know of no one except Shakespeare who in his delineation of woman has so deeply fathomed her soul.”

“Sienkiewicz,” says a writer in the Literary Review, “is a fair sample of that phenomenon which Brandes describes as characteristically Polish, an ideal realist—or a realistic idealist. Over and above all his genius for the creation of robust characters and the inexhaustible invention of dramatic action, stands his peculiar power of running the gamut of human emotion without falling into morbidity or exciting illicit passion. But this is not strange in a writer who could enunciate such a literary philosophy as he did in his criticism of Zola: “The novel must strengthen life, not enfeeble it; must ennoble, not

Xlv INTRODUCTION defile it. The suffocating need pure air . . . it is only in an exhausted field that weeds grow.’ ”’

His own literary creed may be summed up in these words from an essay: ‘‘Because I come of a society in which so much power is wasted, every planned and completed work fills me with real respect and has for me also some wonderful and exceptional charm. Whenever I write Finis at the close of a book of mine, I feel something like a sensation of delight not only because the labor is done, but because of the sensation which comes of a finished work. A whole series of books especially those written in the name of a leading idea is a life task accomplished. It is a harvest home festival in which the leader of the workmen has earned the right to a garland and a song, ‘I bring fruit! I bring fruit!”

J. WALKER McSpappDEN

CONTENTS |

Part One

CHAPTER I woke. He felt greatly fatigued as usual. The eve-

ning before he had been with Nero at a feast which had continued late into the night. For some time past his health had not been good. He said of himself that he felt like a log of wood in the mornings, and barely had sufficient strength to collect his thoughts. However, a bath and the careful massage administered by skilled slaves gradually quickened the flow of his sluggish blood, refreshed him and restored his courage. From the last stage of the bath he issued a new man, his eyes sparkling with wit and animation, rejuvenated, vivacious; so superior that Otho could not equal him; in fact, honestly meriting his sobriquet, arbiter of elegance.

Petronius seldom went to the public baths, and then only to hear some speaker whose reputation had aroused the gossip of the city, or when there were games of particular interest going on in the great hall. In ordinary circumstances he preferred his private baths on his own estate, which Celer, the renowned companion of Severus, had enlarged and rebuilt for him. With so much taste were they equipped, that in spite of the fact that the imperial baths were larger and immeasurably more luxuriously planned, Nero himself owned Petronius’s superior.

As Petronius, bored by Vatinius’s joking, had taken part after last night’s. feast in a discussion with Nero, Lucan and Seneca as to whether women possessed souls, he woke as has been said, late, and according to his habit

|: was not until about noon that Petronius finally made use of the baths. Two colossal slaves having laid him upon a cyprus wood table, which was covered with immaculate Egyptian linen, dipped their hands in perfumed oil and began to rub him. Meanwhile, closing his eyes, he waited till the warmth of the steam and the friction of the rubbers’ hands should penetrate his body and drive away fatigue.

After a short time he opened his eyes and asked of the weather. Later he inquired concerning the precious stones which Idomeneus, the jeweller, had promised to bring him oexamine. As the breeze was from the Alban mountains, the weather promised fair; as for the precious stones they had not yet been sent. At the same instant the slave whose duty it was to announce the names of the visitors to the baths appeared from behind the curtain to say that young Marcus Vinitius, who had just returned from Asia Minor, wished to see Petronius.

Petronius ordered the slaves to carry him to the warm room into which he directed that his guest should be admitted. Vinitius was the son of his eldest sister, who had years before become the wife of Marcus Vinitius, a consul in the reign of Tiberius. Under Corbulo’s command, the young Vinitius had been fighting the Parthians, and had now, after the close of the war, returned to Rome. Petronius was extremely fond of him, because, for one reason, he was handsome and athletic; and also because he had sufficient delicacy of feeling not to exceed a certain moderation in his debaucheries—a faculty which Petronius valued above all others.

“My greetings to Petronius,” said the young man, as with an elastic step he entered the warm room. ‘May all the gods, and especially Aesculapius and Cypris, be indulgent to thee, for under their joint protection nothing can go amiss.”

“Welcome to Rome, and may thy rest be sweet after the war,” answered Petronius, extending his hand from the folds of the soft linen which covered him. ‘What news from Armenia? And while thou wert in Asia didst thou happen to go to Bithynia?”

For a period Petronius had himself been the governor of Bithynia, and had administered the province with firmness and justice. Inasmuch as this activity presented a curious contrast in the character of one noted for indolence and luxurious tastes, Petronius was fond of referring his services to the State, since they showed not only what he was able to do, but what he might have been, had he so wished.

“T did go to Heraclea,” answered Vinitius. ‘I was sent there by Corbulo for reinforcements.”’

“Ah, Heraclea! There it was I knew a girl from Colchis for whom I would give all the divorced women I know—Poppaea included. But how long ago that was! Let us talk of other things: what news of the Parthians? Between ourselves, they bore me, the Volgeses, the Tiridates and Tigranes—all those barbarians who are in the habit of going on all fours at home, as Arulenus says, and who affect to be human beings only with us. Rome talks much of them, however, for the reason, probably, that she is afraid to talk anything else.”

“This war fares badly, and but for Corbulo it might have ended in defeat.”

“Corbulo? By Bacchus, a genuine war-god, a veritable Mars. A great general, and withal an irritable, blunt, thick-witted fellow. In spite of it all I like him—if for nothing else than because Nero fears him.”

“Corbulo is no fool.”

“Perhaps thou art right; but what difference does that make? As Pyrrho says, stupidity is no worse than intelligence, and cannot be told from it.”

Vinitius continued to talk of the war, but when Petronius again closed his eyes, and the young man noticed his uncle’s weary, drawn face, he changed the subject of conversation, and inquired with solicitude concerning his health.

Petronius once more raised his eyelids.

How was his health? So-so. He did not feel perfectly well. He did not feel so badly off, to be sure, as young Sissena, whose sensibilities were so dulled that, in the morning, when he was taken to the bath, he would have to ask whether he was sitting or standing. No, he did not feel well. Vinitius commended him to Aesculapius and Cypris. But he, Petronius, did not believe in Aesculapius. It is not even known whose son that Aesculapius was, whether Arsinoé’s or Coronis’s; and when the mother is in dispute, what is there to say of the father? In these days who will guarantee his own father?

Petronius burst out laughing, and added:

“Two years ago I sent three dozen fat live cocks and a golden cup to Epidaurus. Canst thou imagine why? Said I to myself, whether it do good, or no good, it can do no harm. I am of the opinion that those who bring offerings to the gods, reason just as I do. All, with the possible exception of the mule drivers travellers hire at the gate of Capena. In addition to Aesculapius I accidentally had some business with some of his kind last year when my kidneys were out of order. They prescribed a night’s sleep within the walls of a temple. I knew them for rogues, but even then I asked myself, what harm can come to me from that? Society rests on roguery, and life itself is self-deception. Even the soul is a dream. Nevertheless, one ought to have a certain degree of intelligence to be able to distinguish the errors that are pleasant from those that are not. I direct that my sweat room shall be heated with cedar wood sprinkled with ambergris, because while I am alive I prefer perfumes to stenches. As for Cypris, to whose good graces thou hast also commended me, I know enough about her protection to have introduced shooting pains in my right foot. But for all that she is a good goddess. I foresee the time, sooner or later, when thou also will be bringing white doves to her altar.”

“Thou hast guessed right,” answered Vinitius. “I came away scatheless from the arrows of the Parthians, but Love transfixed me, in a most unforeseen way, not a mile outside the city gate.”

“By the white knees of the Graces, thou shalt tell me about this at length,” said Petronius.

“I came to thee particularly for advice,’ answered Marcus.

The manicures who now began to busy themselves with Petronius interrupted him, and Marcus, at Petronius’s invitation, doffed his tunic and plunged into the tepid bath.

“Bless me! I did not even ask thee if thy love is returned,” said Petronius, as he gazed at Vinitius’s youthful figure, which seemed as if chiselled from marble. “If Lissipus had only seen thee thou wouldst be gracing at this very moment the Palatine Gate as a statue of the young Hercules.”

The young man smiled with satisfaction, as he plunged about in the bath, and sent the warm water in an infinitude of sparkling drops over the mosaic which represented Hera at that moment when the goddess begged that sleep might close the eyes of Zeus. Petronius stared at him with the delighted gaze of an artist.

When Vinitius came out of the bath and, in turn, had given himself into the hands of the manicures, the reader entered, carrying at his chest a bronze tube containing rolls of papyrus.

“Wouldst thou like to listen?” asked Petronius.

“Tf it is something of thine own—with pleasure,” answered Vinitius. ‘“‘Otherwise I would prefer to talk. Poets, now-a-days, button-hole one at every street corners

“Right. It is impossible to get past any one of the basilicas, or baths, or libraries, or book shops, without running into a poet gesticulating like a monkey. When Agrippa came back from the East, he mistook them for lunatics. That is the way things go at present. Caesar is writing verses, therefore every one is imitating him. Only one thing is forbidden: To write better verses than Caesar’s, and for that reason I fear somewhat for Lucan. As for me, I write prose with which, moreover, I neither regale myself nor others. The reader is about to read the lines of the ill-fated Fabricius Veiento.”

“Why ill-fated?”

“Because he has been commanded to amuse himself in the character of Odysseus and forbidden to return to his household gods till he received a fresh command. In one respect, however, this Odyssey will not be as hard as Ulysses’s—his wife is not at all like Penelope. It is, I think, superfluous to explain to thee that the command was stupid. But in this place appearances are the only things that count. Fabricius wrote a wretched, tiresome book; but for all that every one is reading it with rapture, now that the author is exiled. From every quarter all one hears is, it is a scandal, a scandal. Possibly Fabricius has exaggerated a trifle, but I assure you, knowing our city and its heads of families and its women so well, that his account is paler than the reality. But that fact does not prevent his readers searching for allusions to themselves with terror, and to their friends with delight. At Avernus’s bookstore there are a hundred clerks kept copying the book at dictation—it is an assured success.”

“Did any of thy escapades get into it?”

“Of course. But the author fooled himself, because he did not see that I am at once much worse and less stupid than he has represented me. You see we have here long since lost the faculty of distinguishing what is moral from what is immoral. For my part, I am of the opinion that no distinction need be made, although Seneca, Musonius and Trasca pretend to see one. But for me it is a matter of indifference. By Hercules! I speak my mind openly. But I have persistently held to one point of superiority, which is that I do not confound what is ugly with what is beautiful. And this is, for instance, something our Bronzebeard, the poet, the driver, singer, dancer and historian does not understand.”

“Nevertheless, I am sorry for Fabricius; he is a good companion.”

“Conceit ruined him. Every one suspected him, yet no one was certain. He could not restrain himself, and gave the whole thing away in confidence.”

“Didst thou hear the story about Ruffinus?”

CONG).

“In that case let us go into the cool room. We will cool off there and I will tell thee the tale.”

They entered the cooling room. In the centre a fountain arising from a pale rose-colored basin diffused the perfume of violets. Seating themselves in an alcove, covered with a silken fabric, they began to breathe in the coolness. For a few moments neither spoke. Vinitius dreamily gazed at the statue of a bronze faun who, as he inclined over a nymph’s arm, tried eagerly to kiss her on the lips. After an interval he said: