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But he did not believe her, and, drawing her hand toward him more vigorously, he would have drawn it to his heart, which, under the influence of desire roused by the marvellous maiden, was beating like a hammer, and would have addressed burning words to her directly had not old Aulus appeared on a path set in a frame of myrtles, who said, while approaching them, "The sun is setting; so beware of the evening coolness, and do not trifle with Libitina."
I have completed a monument more lasting than brass, and more sublime than the regal elevation of pyramids, which neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north wind, nor an innumerable succession of years, and the flight of seasons, shall be able to demolish. I shall not wholly die; but a great part of me shall escape Libitina.
The number of funerals was evident, and it was repeated from ear to ear that fresh piacula were needed to mollify the unknown god. Offerings were made in the temples to Jove and Libitina. At last, in spite of every effort of Tigellinus and his assistants, the opinion kept spreading that the city had been burned at command of Cæsar, and that the Christians were suffering innocently.
At each focus of the arena was placed a round marble altar, one to Venus Libitina, one to Pluto.
The goddess who presided over funerals was Libitina, whose temple at Rome, the undertakers furnished with all the necessaries for the interment of the poor or rich; all dead bodies were carried through the Porto Libitina; and the Rationes Libitinae mentioned by Suetonius, very nearly answer to our bills of mortality. She taught the art of cutting wood with a hatchet to make fires.
After a time it was possible to see torches under the quivering flames. Niger made the sign of the cross, and began to pray. Meanwhile the gloomy procession drew nearer, and halted at last in front of the temple of Libitina. Petronius, Vinicius, and Niger pressed up to the rampart in silence, not knowing why the halt was made.
To-day the sky is clear, but since morning it is sultry. Every night now there will be wind and rain." "Will ye go without torches?" inquired Vinicius. "The torches are carried only in advance. In every event, be near the temple of Libitina at dark, though usually we carry out the corpses only just before midnight." They stopped. Nothing was to be heard save the hurried breathing of Vinicius.
The goddess whose boons adorn the outward shell of the human spirit came back to her favourite's death-couch as she had come to the cradle not now as the Venus Erycina, goddess of Smile and Jest, but as the warning Venus Libitina, the goddess of Doom and the Funeral. "I'm a very poor creature," said Jasper, after a pause. "I can't rise I can't move without help. Very strange supernatural!
Deeply dyed as she is in bloodguiltiness, the wife of Arden is much less of a born criminal than these. To her, at once the agent and the patient of her crime, the victim and the instrument of sacrifice and blood-offering to Venus Libitina, goddess of love and death, to her, even in the deepest pit of her deliberate wickedness, remorse is natural and redemption conceivable.
Especially he taught them to honour the goddess Libitina, the goddess who presides over funeral rites, whether she be Proserpine, or rather Venus, as the most learned Romans imagine, not unnaturally referring our birth and our death to the same divinity. He also defined the periods of mourning, according to the age of the deceased.
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