II
In the following weeks Paulus remembered some things in the conversation of this day, which at the time had made but slight impression on him. The stories of professors and teachers had meant little until he knew at first hand the lentil suppers and brilliant talking at the house of Taurus, the ethical discussions with Peregrinus in his hovel on the outskirts of the city, and, most of all, the generous and ennobling hospitality, in his city house and villas, of the millionaire rhetorician, Herodes Atticus. About Peregrinus Paulus could never make up his mind. Was he the helpful teacher Gellius thought him, or the blatant charlatan of Lucian's frequent attacks? At any rate, the stories that were abroad about his wild youth, his connection with the strange sect known as Christians, his excommunication by them for profaning one of their rites, his expulsion from Rome by the Prefect of the City for his anarchistic harangues made a picturesque background for his cynic garb and ascetic preaching. To Taurus and Atticus, on the other hand, Paulus could give himself with unreserved loyalty. His hardy will responded to the severe standards of thought and conduct set by the Platonic philosopher, while the wilder heart within him seemed to seek and understand the rhetorician's emotional nature and extravagant affections.
Indeed, as the spring passed into summer, all the elements in Paulus's life seemed to confirm the glory of that day on the slopes of Hymettus when he had first felt sure of the significance Greece held for him. The cumulative effect of his association with older men, his young friendships, his work toward his chosen goal, his grave but piercing pleasures, was to make him at home in Athens as he had never been at home in Rome. He rested in the charm of the smaller, simpler city, where among all classes and all ways of life mental refinement took precedence of crass display. Here, he felt, he could live and work, unknown to fame indeed, but with all that was best in him dedicated in freedom and integrity to the life of the spirit. The memory of Egypt, where all effort lost itself in the mockery of the desert, and the thought of Rome, where in these later years all fruitful effort was military, political, commercial, became almost equally abhorrent to him. Greece, set within her stainless seas, was like a holy temple set apart, a place of refuge from shams and error and confusion.
This worshipful attitude towards Athens was crystallized in the young poet at the time of the Panathenaic festival, in July. The festival was still a brilliant one, a brief radiance falling upon city and citizens. Unlike a holiday season at Rome, here were no shows of gladiators or beasts, no procession of captors and captives, no array of Arabian gold or Chinese silk or Indian embroideries. The Athenians, seeking novelty, found it in their own renewed appreciation of the physical skill of athletes, of music and drama, of observances still hallowed by religion and patriotism. On the Acropolis Paulus watched the arrival of the procession bringing this year's peplos to Athena. After centuries of shame in the political life of her city the gold-ivory statue of the Guardian Goddess shone undefiled in a temple whose beauty was a denial of time. The pageant also, once more paying tribute to Wisdom, was noble and beautiful as in the days of Phidias. The gifts of Greece were beyond the reach of conqueror or destroyer. Paulus entered the inner shrine and looked up at the winged Victory borne upon the hand of the goddess. To dwell in Athens seemed a sacred purpose. Involuntarily, in self-dedication, he found himself using the familiar prayer of the theatre:
O majestical Victory, shelter my life
Neath thy covert of wings,
Aye, cease not to grant me thy crowning.