The Chaldean Magician / An Adventure in Rome in the Reign of the Emperor Diocletian

AN ADVENTURE IN ROME IN THE REIGN OF THE EMPEROR DIOCLETIAN
BY ERNST ECKSTEIN Author of “Quintus Claudius,” etc.
From the German by MARY J. SAFFORD
NEW YORK WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER 11 MURRAY STREET 1886
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886 by William S. Gottsberger in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
Press of William S. Gottsberger New York
THE CHALDEAN MAGICIAN.
A cloudless October day, A. D. 299, was drawing to a close; the western sky behind the crest of Mt. Janiculum still glowed with crimson light, but the population in the streets and squares of the world’s capital were already moving in a bluish twilight and yellow-red lamps shone, veiled by smoke, from the taverns of the many-gabled Subura.
A youth with a white toga thrown over his shoulders, coming from the Querquetulanian Gate, turned into the Cyprian Way. His manner of walking was somewhat peculiar. Sometimes he rushed hastily forward, like a man impatiently striving to reach his destination; at others he glanced hesitatingly around or stopped a few seconds as though repenting his design. Passing the Baths of Titus he perceived, only a few yards distant, another youth who had entered the Cyprian Way from a side street on the left and with bowed head was pursuing the same direction over the lava stones of the pavement. Looking more closely, he recognized a friend’s countenance in the new-comer’s pallid features.
It was nearly six weeks since he had seen pleasant Lucius Rutilius; for the two young men’s paths in life were entirely different. While Rutilius, the son of a wealthy senator, was fond of moving in the most select circles of the capital, visiting the theatres, the races and combats in the arena, and during the summer spending his time alternately at his country estate in Etruria, the waterfalls of Tibur, the shore of the gulf of Baiae, or the strand of Antium, Caius Bononius, the son of a knight, led a somewhat secluded existence in the solitude of his study, allowing himself at the utmost a short trip during the hottest months to the world-renowned Diana’s Mirror, the lovely secluded lake in the neighboring Alban Hills, where he owned a modest little garden. Spite of this diversity in external circumstances, the two young men cherished a deeply-rooted friendship for each other. Lucius Rutilius valued the comprehensive knowledge, insatiable thirst for information, and proud independence possessed by Caius Bononius; while the latter knew that Rutilius beheld the splendor of life in the great capital, not with the eyes of the coarse man of pleasure, but with those of the poet; that he revelled in the pomp of color, the luxury of eternal Rome, as the creative artist rejoiced in the effects of light and shade in a landscape; that amid this seething whirlpool he had preserved a warm heart, a noble unselfishness of nature.