CHAPTER IV.
Two days afterward, Dionysius the Athenian called at the inn, and informed Aglais, Paulus, and Agatha, that after the banquet in the Mamurran palace at Formiæ, that evening, there was to be a great gathering of the witty, the noble, the fashionable, and the wise, and that he was charged to invite Aglais and her two children as friends of his.
Aglais declined the honor for herself and her daughter, but said she wished Paulus to go with Dionysius. Paulus, therefore, laid aside the outlandish costume in which he had travelled from Thessaly, and dressed himself with care in the fashion suitable to a young Roman of equestrian rank. Dionysius remained to join the family in their repast, which was virtually what we should in modern times call the early dinner, after which the two friends mounted Dion's chariot, and proceeded toward Formiæ at an easy pace, along the smooth pavement of the "queen of roads."
During the drive they had a conversation which was, for good reasons, very interesting to Paulus.
"A most capricious course," said Dionysius, "is your suit or claim running. In seeking to recover your family estates you prudently avoid at first bringing the holder into a court of law; for the judges might shrink from voiding a title which not only arises out of an express gift of Augustus, but is identical with the title under which half the land of Italy has been held since the battle of Philippi. Instead of an immediate lawsuit, therefore, you try a direct appeal to Augustus, offering to show him that at the very time when your father's estate was taken away he had just rendered the same services for which, had he been willing to accept it, he would, like so many others, have had a right to be endowed with a new estate, taken from some member of the defeated party. But Augustus refers you back to the courts, where, for the two reasons mentioned, you fear the result. But two other reasons might be added for fearing it still more: first, the present holder is dreaded on account of his political power and his station; Tiberius is the man who, by marrying the daughter of Agrippa Vipsanius, has come into possession of your property; secondly, wealth is necessary for the success of such a suit; wealth he has, and wealth you have not. The courts present, consequently, but small hopes; yet you fail to get Augustus to decide your case himself.
"Have I correctly stated the position of your affairs?"
"To a nicety," replied Paulus. "Had I interest at court, I should find justice there."
"In your case," said Dionysius, "interest at court would be equivalent to justice in the courts. As I took precisely this view of the business, and as Augustus has paid me such honor, and shown me such partiality as few have found with him for many years, it occurred to me that if I threw my unclaimed and unexpected interest into the same scale wherein your just demands already lay—"
"Ah kind and generous friend!" interrupted Paulus; "I understand."
"Not so kind, nor so generous," replied Dionysius, "to my friend Paulus, as I saw Paulus show himself to be the day before yesterday to a stranger and a slave. But hear me out. No sooner did I tell Augustus that I had a favor to ask of him, than he placed his hand on my mouth, and said, 'I like to hear you talk; but mine has been too busy a life to permit me to draw forth by properly opposing you the full force of your own opinions—OR THE TRUTH. The truth in these matters (not your affair, Paulus, but philosophy) is the only truth which can interest a man about to die. You must state these views in the presence of young, vigorous, and not preoccupied intellects. If you hold your own as well against what they can allege as against my objections, submit to me afterward your petition. One thing at a time.' This and the like, with the indomitable whim and obstinate waywardness of age, he has continued to fling at me, whenever I have renewed the attempt to state your case; and I have done so five or six times. Titus Livy and Quintus Haterius, whom I have consulted, advise me to take literally and in the spirit of downright business this curious caprice. Now, do you know, to-night is appointed for a sort of arena-fight? All the gladiatorial intellects of the west are to be arrayed to crush the fantastic theories and pretty delusions of a Greek, an Athenian. All motives chain me, all pledges prevent me; moreover, honor and truth, to say nothing, my friend, of your own personal future, interdict me from flight."
"Flight!" cried Paulus; "you fly?"
"Ah!" said Dionysius; "you know not all that I mean. You and I have been differently reared, yet in the same spirit. However, as you said, when at the risk of your own life you stood between oppression and an innocent young couple, the great Being whom we both expect will be pleased with a willing effort after what is right.
"But here we are at the gates of Formiæ. How the palace of the Mamurras glitters! How these narrow streets flare with torches! We must go at a walk. Charioteer, let the litters pass first. Yes, my friend, in the painful position in which I shall be forced to stand to-night, (and I blush beforehand, knowing my incompetence, my ignorance, and the intrinsic difficulty of what I am expected to do,) your future fortunes and the rights of your family are by a strange caprice made dependent upon the success with which I may be able to defend ideas of general and unchangeable value, beauty, and truth; ideas which it debases a man not to have, and exalts him to entertain; ideas which were always dear to the greatest minds that have preceded us, and which are reflected in every calm and pure soul, as the stars in fair, sweet lakes, although the putrid, slimy pool, and the waters tossed with storms, and an atmosphere darkened with clouds, may forbid the image, by intercepting the heavenly light or defacing the earthly mirror."
While Dionysius thus informed Paulus of the singular and close connection which had arisen between the future prospects of his mother, his sister, and himself, as well as the establishment of their rights, and the success with which Dionysius might this night be able to make good his philosophical doctrines against the wits, the orators, and the sophists of the Augustan court, at the same moment Tiberius was conversing upon the same subject with Domitius Afer and Antistius Labio in a room of the Mamurran palace.
"Just," said he, in continuation of a conversation previously commenced, "as if a person's claim to an estate could be rendered either better or worse by the style of his horsemanship!"
Here Domitius Afer laughed heartily, and showed his admiration of Cæsar's wit. Labio, a saturnine, laborious man, son of one of the assassins of Julius Cæsar, and author of numberless works, preserved a grim, unsmiling air, as he observed,
"A man may ride over an estate, and over all its hedges and ditches; but he must be no bad rider if he can jump his horse into a title to become its proprietor."
"Nevertheless, the infatuation of Augustus for the Greek friend of the claimant is such that if the Athenian acquits himself successfully to-night in the Mæcenas-like criticisms and Plato-like discussions which are, I suspect, to vary our entertainments, he will next suffer the golden-tongued youth to state the case of Paulus Lepidus Æmilius. The effect at which you must aim is to make a fool of the Athenian; and you are the men to do it. Refute every thing he says, ridicule him, cover him with confusion; make him the gibe of the whole court, the derision of the brilliant circle assembling here to-night. Put an end to his influence. We want no more mind-battles in Italy. I set dogs upon a dog. Arouse all your attention. Bend all your energies. Let the stranger retire from among us in disgrace."
That night, the most brilliant company which could then be culled out of the human race was assembled in the central impluvium of the Mamurran palace and its arcades. Lamps, hanging from the festoons of creeping plants which adorned and connected the porphyry pillars of the colonnades, mingled their gleam with the light of the moon and stars. The variety of rays, of shadows, and of coloring which were thus sprinkled over the flowers, the leaves, the walls and pillars, the faces, figures, and dresses, produced a scene which a painter could better render than words can. The central fountain was smitten into a sorcery of tints, as it shed into a large basin of green marble the drooping sheaf of waters, of which the materials were perpetually changing, and the form and outlines perfectly maintained, or instantly and perpetually renewed.
The Emperor, and the Cæsars, Tiberius and Germanicus, with the famous authors we have already more than once mentioned, Livy, and Lucius Varius, and Velleius Paterculus were present. Ælius Sejanus, the prefect of the Prætorians; Cneius Piso, the gambler; Plancina, his rich wife; Lucius Piso, his brother, governor of Rome; with many persons who then sparkled in the court orbits, but whose names have perished out of human memory; and Julia, the emperor's daughter, Tiberius's new wife; and Agrippina Vipsania, lately his wife; and Agrippina Julia, daughter of the former, sister of the latter, wife of Germanicus, and mother of Caligula; and Livia, the aged wife of Augustus himself, all appeared among the guests. Chairs and couches had been placed here and there. Augustus and the ladies we have mentioned were seated, some just within, others just without one of the arcades, between two of its columns, so that the moonlight fell upon some heads, the lamplight upon others; and a wayward, dubious mixture of both upon the golden tresses of Agrippina Julia, and of a beautiful young girl near her, on whom Domitius Afer, the celebrated orator, was gazing with admiration. But she, when she at last observed his glance, fixed upon him such a look of combined scorn and amazement that the advocate winced and became livid. She was destined, one day, to be the subject of his fatal eloquence, and to appease by nothing less than her execution the vindictive vanity of the orator, because she had spurned the ambitious love of the man.
Tacitus alludes to the poor Claudia Pulchra's brief tale. Quintus Haterius, whose Shakespeare-like variety of mind and bewitching eloquence had, as Ben Jonson implies in a comparison already cited by us, few rivals, was seated not far from Augustus. Next sat Livy. Antistius Labio and his rival Domitius Afer, who now occupied the place and fame in the forum from which Haterius on account of his age had withdrawn, stood leaning against a pillar, each with his arms folded. Both these persons, as well as Livy and Haterius, wore the toga; Sejanus, the scarlet paludamentum. The other male guests—except Tiberius, whose dark purple robe was conspicuous, and Germanicus, who was dressed in the costume of a commander-in-chief—wore a species of large tunic, called lacerna, which (contrary to the taste of the emperor, and despite of his frequently expressed disapproval) had become fashionable. The story mentioned by Suetonius is well known. One day Augustus, seeing numbers of the people wearing the lacerna, asked indignantly, in a line of Virgil's, could these be Romans, "Romanos rerum dominos, GENTEMQUE TOGATAM," and ordered the ædiles to admit none but toga-wearers into either the forum or the circus. But this was many years before the evening with which we are now engaged.
Among the groups collected in the Mamurran palace were representatives of the three great arts, in mastering which the highest education of classic antiquity was exhausted; we mean the arts of politics, of public speaking, and of strategy—government, eloquence, and war. They were all represented, each of them had its proper image in the groups we have described. As those pursuits constituted the favorite intellectual sphere, and comprehended all the fields of ambition, to be eminent in any one of them was to succeed in life, and to be adopted into that class of society of which so many distinguished members were entertained in the Formian palace on the night at which our tale has arrived.
If a man excelled, like Julius Cæsar, in all the three arts named, he could revolutionize the world. The mechanic arts, the fine arts, philosophy, physical science, mathematics, attracted individual votaries indeed; but were neglected by the ambition of a few, as well as by the indolence of many.
The mention of physical studies recalls Strabo, the geographer, who was among the guests this evening at the palace.
Many others who were there we need not enumerate; but some will claim a word and a glance. When Dionysius arrived, and introduced Paulus to the aged knight, Mamurra, the company was already numerous. Mamurra patted Paulus on the shoulder, and said, although the other day in the road he had not at once recalled old times, he remembered Paulus's brave father very well at the battle of Philippi; and that he, Mamurra, had seen him and Agrippa Vipsanius together, rallying the wing which Mark Antony had broken, and that he himself had charged with the cavalry to help him. This speech was very gracious, and our hero, who well knew it to be true, blushed with pride and pleasure. While the glow of this natural and honorable emotion was still coloring his young face, as he bowed to Mamurra, the latter took him by the arm, and said in a low voice,
"Come, let an old soldier present the son of a former comrade, whose life was honorable, and whose memory is glorious, to the master for whom they both fought with equal zeal, although unequal fortune."
Augustus returned Paulus's low salutation with a faint yet not unkindly smile, and then looked with a sort of sleepy steadiness at Tiberius, who heard Mamurra's words, and whose face was apparently flaming with a dark red rage. Near Tiberius, who now threw himself upon the cushions of a couch plated with gold, just opposite the chair which Augustus had selected, stood a tall, regular-featured, Brahmin-like man, in Asiatic dress, and next to this individual, Sejanus, with his usual air of supercilious composure, yet intent watchfulness.
The couch we have mentioned was long and large, and two ladies, one old, the other young, were already sitting at the further end of it. The first was Antonia, the mother of Germanicus, the second was Agrippina Julia, his wife. Just in front of them, upon a low stool, sat the son of the latter, Caius Caligula, with his eyes yet bandaged, as the reader will not be surprised to hear; while at his side, fidgeting with large, red, lubberly hands, stood a big, loutish, heavy-looking boy, who was considerably the senior of that dear child. This was no other than Claudius, the fourth of the Cæsarian dynasty, (or the fifth, if Julius Cæsar be accounted the first,) reserved, against his will, to mount the throne of the world amid panic and horror, that day when Caligula shall be hacked to pieces by Cassius Chærias, in the theatre of the palace at Rome.
Thus, three future rulers of mankind, destined to bear dire sceptres in dark and evil days, were around the white hairs of Augustus Cæsar to-night.
As Paulus stepped backward after Augustus's languid but not unkindly reception of him, Dionysius, who was just behind, moved quickly and gracefully out of his way, and Claudius, the big, loutish lad, being impelled thereto by the nature of him, shuffled forward so as to come in collision with Paulus.
"Monster!" exclaimed Antonia, ashamed of her son's awkwardness; "if I wanted to prove any one void of all mind, I would call him more stupid than you!"[286]
Paulus glided into the background, saying with a bow and a smile, "My fault!"
He now found himself in the immediate neighborhood of that eastern group which his young sister had described as presenting themselves one morning at the entrance of the bower in the inn garden, when she was there listening to the strange conversation of Plancina; we mean Queen Berenice and her daughter Herodias, and her son Herod Agrippa.
They all three fixed their gaze upon him with that unabashed, hardy manner peculiar to the family, and Paulus was beginning to feel uncomfortable in their vicinity and under their scrutiny, when Germanicus Cæsar approached, and complimenting him upon his brilliant exploit two evenings before, asked him whether he would like to join the expedition which was to start next day to drive the Germans from the north-east of Italy?
If he would, Germanicus offered to mount him splendidly, and keep him near his own person, and make him the bearer of orders to the generals; in modern phrase, give him a place on the staff. Paulus thanked the commander-in-chief briefly and respectfully, and asked to be allowed to wait till noon next day before giving a more definite answer than that he should rejoice to accept the gracious offer; his mother and sister had no protector except himself, and he should not like to leave them, without first hearing what they said. Germanicus assented.
During the short conversation of which this was the substance, Germanicus had moved slowly up the gravel-walk; and Paulus of course attended him, listening and answering, not sorry besides to put some space between himself and the unpleasant Jewish group. By the time they had finished speaking they had arrived opposite the couch where Tiberius, Antonia, and Agrippina were seated, with Germanicus's child, Caligula, as we have described, occupying a low stool in front of his mother Agrippina. Close by, leaning against a pillar, stood a youth in the uniform of a centurion who had a most determined, thoughtful countenance.
On the approach of Germanicus, he briskly quitted his lounging attitude to salute his commander.
"Young knight," said Germanicus to Paulus, "let me make you acquainted with as brave a youth, I think, as can be found in all the Roman legions; this is Cassius Chærias."
"Who, father," asked the shrill voice of the child Caligula, "is the brave youth, do you say?"
"Cassius Chærias."
"Are you so brave?" persisted the impudent child, shoving up his bandage impatiently, and disclosing a truly disfigured and malicious little face.
"I can't see you, or what you are like. But I think I could make you afraid if I was emperor."
The man destined hereafter to deliver mankind from the boundless profligacy, the wicked oppression, and the insane, raging, incredible cruelties of which it was daily the miserable victim by killing Caligula the emperor, looked steadily at Caligula the child, and said not a word.
"I should like to feel your sword, whether it is heavy," pursued the child. "Give it me." And he started to his feet.
"Silence! pert baby," said Germanicus, pushing him back into his place.
"It seems to me," said Augustus, looking round, and there was an instantaneous hush of general conversation as he did so; "that we have represented around us Europe, Asia, and Africa. Young Herod and his friends may count for Asia."
"You," added Augustus, addressing the tall, Brahmin-like man who stood near Tiberius, "come from Egypt, do you not?"
"Mighty emperor," returned the other in measured and sepulchral tones, "I come from the land where great Babylon once was the seat of empire."
No sooner had this man opened his mouth than the observant Sejanus started.
Approaching his mouth to the other's ear, he whispered,
"I have heard your voice before; you are—?"
"I am," replied the other, composedly eyeing his questioner, "Thrasyllus Magus—Thrasyllus, the student of the stars."
Sejanus smiled, twisted his moustache in his white fingers, and asked,
"Are you sure that you are not the god Hermes? and that you do not sometimes ride of nights, with your horse's hoofs wrapped in cloth?"
It was now the other's turn to start.
"Do you suppose," pursued Sejanus, still in a whisper, "that I had not every stable in Formiæ searched the night you played that trick on the road? I know my master Tiberius's taste for divination and the various deep things you practice. You, then, are the oracle who reveals to him the decrees of fate?"
The exchange of further remarks between these worthy men was here suspended; for Augustus again spoke amid general attention.
"I think," said he, "that we should all now be glad to hear Dionysius the Athenian." An eager hum of assent and approval arose from the jaded and sated, but inquisitive and critical society around.
"There are in your philosophy," continued Augustus, "two leading principles, my Athenian, in support of which I am both curious and anxious to hear you advance some solid and convincing reasons. You despise, as Cicero despised it, the notion of a plurality of gods. You affirm there is only one. You say that a god who could begin to be a god, or begin at all, can be no god; and that the true King of all kings, is the giver of whatever exists, and the recipient of nothing. That he is without a body, a pure and holy intelligence. That as every thing else is his work, there never were, and never will be, and never could be, any limits either of his power or of his knowledge. At the same time, you reject the notion, adopted in some Greek systems, that he is the soul of the visible universe, and this universe his body; affirming him to be antecedent to and independent of all things, and all other things to be absolutely dependent upon him.
"Is it not so?"
"Yes," answered Dionysius; "such is my assured conviction."
"This, then," said Augustus, "is the first question upon which I wish to hear you; and the second is, whether that force or principle within each of us which thinks, reflects, reasons, and is conscious of itself, will perish at our death, or will live beyond it, and is of such a nature that it will never perish, as Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, and many other illustrious men and very great thinkers have so ardently contended."
"Ah!" said Dionysius, in a voice indescribably sweet and thrilling, while all turned their eyes toward him; "unless that God himself assist me, I shall be quite unequal to the task you impose upon me, Augustus. I am not worthy to treat the subject upon which you desire me to speak. You are aware that many learned persons in our Europe expect, and for a long time have expected, some divine being to appear one day among men. I see the able governor of Rome, Lucius Piso. None will accuse Piso of credulity, none suppose him a weaver of idle fancies, or a dreamer of gratuitous reveries. An able administrator, an accomplished man of the world, and, if he will pardon me, more inclined to be too sarcastic than too indulgent, he, nevertheless, despises not this expectation. Our learned friend Strabo, whom I see near me, will tell you moreover how it prevails, and has from immemorial times prevailed, in various and often perverted forms, yet with an underlying essence of permanent identity, among the innumerable nations which make some thirty languages resound through the immense expanses of Asia. But Domitius Afer desires to interrupt me."
Afer said,
"I do not discern how this ancient and mysterious expectation which floats vaguely through the traditions of all mankind, and in a more definite shape forms the groundwork for the whole religion of the Jewish nation, can be at all connected either with the immortality of the thinking principle inside of us, or with the question whether there is one supreme, absolute, and eternal God who made this universe."
"All I would have added," replied Dionysius, "in regard to that expectation was, that after the appearance of this universal benefactor, many sublime ideas which hitherto only the strongest intellects have entertained, will probably become familiar to the meanest—common to all.
"I pass to the two questions which Augustus desires to hear argued; and, first, let me collect the opinions of this brilliant company; I will then compare them with mine. What does Antistius Labio think?"
"I should have to invent a term to express my notion," said Labio. "I think all things are but emanations from, and return to, the same being. What might be called pantheism, if we coined a word from the language of your country, best explains, I fancy, the phenomena of the universe. Every thing is growth and decay; but as decay furnishes larger growth, every thing is growth at last and in the total sum."
"Is this growth of all things under any general control?" asked Dionysius.
"Each thing," replied Labio, "is under the control of its own nature, which evidently it cannot change, and every inferior thing besides is under the control of any superior thing with which it may come into relations. Thus what is active is superior as such to what is passive; it is more excellent and a higher force to act upon, or sway, or change, or move, or form, than to be acted upon, moved, or modified. The mind of an architect, for instance, is a higher force than the dead weight of the inert stones from which he builds a palace."
"Then you hold that some things have force, and that there are greater and smaller forces?" asked Dionysius.
"Undoubtedly," said Labio.
"Which is more excellent," asked Dionysius, "a force which can move itself, or a force which, in order to exist, must be set in motion by another?"
"This last," said Labio, "is only the first prolonged; it is but a continuation, an effect."
"And an effect," pursued the Greek, "is inferior, as such, to what controls it; and inferior also in its very nature to that which requires no cause?"
"Certainly," returned Labio; "I am not so dull as to gainsay that."
"Now favor me with your attention," returned the Athenian; "I want you to extricate me from a dilemma. Either every thing which possesses force has received its force from something else; or there is something which possesses force, and which never received this force from any thing else, and which, therefore, has possessed it from all eternity. Which of these two alternatives do you select?"
Labio paused, and by this time the whole of that strangely mixed society was listening with the keenest relish and the most genuine interest to the conversation.
"I see whither you tend," replied Labio, "but I do not believe in that universal ruler and original mind, or first force, which you think to demonstrate. All things go in circles, and serially. Every force which exists has been derived from some other; and each in its turn continues the movement, or communicates the impact."
"Prettily expressed," remarked Velleius Paterculus.
"I beg Augustus," said the Athenian, "to mark and remember Labio's words. Every thing which has force has received its force from something else. Do you say every thing, Labio, without exception?"
"Yes, every thing," said Labio. "I conceive the chain to be endless."
"But not having, good Labio," replied the Athenian, "goes before receiving. I cannot, and you cannot, receive that which we have already. In order to say that we receive any thing, we must first be without it—must we not? The state of not having, I repeat, precedes the act of receiving. Does any person deny this? Does Labio?"
No one here spoke.
"Then," said the Athenian, "in maintaining that every thing which possesses force has received that force from something else, Labio necessarily maintains that every thing which possesses force was first without it. I therefore perceive there must have been a time when nothing possessed any force whatever. The very first thing which possessed any, received it; but whence? For, at that time, there was nothing to give it. What says Labio? Is pantheism silent?"
"I wish to hear more," said Labio; "I will answer you afterward."
A momentary smile, like a passing gleam, lit up the faces of those around, as the Athenian, looking toward Domitius Afer, requested him the next to favor the company with his opinion upon the two momentous questions propounded by Augustus.
"I need not, like Labio, coin a term from the Greek," said Afer, "to describe my system. I am a materialist. I believe nothing save what my senses attest. They show me neither God nor soul; and I am determined never to accept any other criterion."
"Are you quite sure," asked Dionysius, "that you are thus determined? I should like to shake such a determination."
"You'll fail," replied Afer, smiling. "Which of your senses, then, has attested to you that very determination? Can you see, taste, smell, hear, or touch it? And yet you tell us you are sure of it. If so, you can believe in, and be sure of, something which has never been submitted to the criterion which alone you admit."
"A determination is not a thing," said Afer hastily, and with a little confusion.
"Was Julius Cæsar a thing?" persisted Dionysius; "because if you believe that Julius Cæsar existed, having heard of him and read of him, your senses of hearing and seeing do not attest to you in this case the existence of Julius Cæsar, but simply the affirmations of others that he has existed. My hearing attests to me that Strabo says he has been in Spain; and this, if there were no other reason, would satisfy me that Spain exists; yet it is Strabo whom I hear. I do not hear Spain."
Augustus clapped his hands gently, and laughed. Domitius Afer, with visible anger, exclaimed,
"I mean, that I will take nothing but upon proof. Prove that the soul is immortal; prove that one supreme God exists. Every thing which a reasonable man believes ought to be demonstrated."
"I hope," said Dionysius, "to prove those two truths to your satisfaction. But as you say that all we believe ought to be demonstrated, I will first offer you a demonstration, that it is impossible to demonstrate every thing. To prove any proposition, you require a second; and to prove the second, in its turn, you require a third; and it is upon this third, if you admit it, that the demonstration of the first depends. But if you had fifty propositions, or any number, in the chain, what proves the last of them?"
"Another yet," said Afer.
"But," said the Greek, "either you come to a last, or you never come to a last. If you never come to a last proposition, you never finish your proof; you leave it uncompleted; it remains still no proof at all; you have not performed what you undertook. And if you do come to a final proposition, which is supported by no other, what supports it?"
There was a little start of pleasure in the company at the sudden and clear closes to which the Athenian was, each and every time, bringing what seemed likely to have grown into intricate and long disquisitions.
"My object, Augustus," pursued Dion, "was to show that we are all so made that we feel compelled to believe much more than we can prove. Otherwise, our knowledge would be confined within narrow limits indeed. He who knows no more than he can demonstrate, knows but little. May I now ask the distinguished orators, Montanus and Capito, for their theories respecting the questions which interest us so much to-night?"
Quintus Haterius prevented any answer to this appeal. "The eloquent and learned thinker," said he—"who will yet, I have no doubt, be the ornament of the Athenian Areopagus—has placed me, and, I think, many others near me, completely on his side, in what has hitherto passed. Young as he is, he has made us feel the masterful facility with which he is able to throw light upon errors placed where truth ought to stand. The operation is highly amusing; we could pass a long evening in watching it repeated against any number of antagonists. But come, Dionysius, reverse the process; take your own ground; maintain it; raise there your system like your castle; and let those assail it, if they please, whom your aggressive genius on the contrary turns to assail."
"Haterius is right," said Augustus. "I could assist at any number of these collisions; but they take a form which presents your mind to us, my Athenian, as a hunter and conqueror rather than a founder."
"But I am no founder," replied the youth, earnestly and modestly; "and I aspire to nothing of the kind. The fact is merely and simply this: After much study I have arrived at the conviction—first, that there is one absolutely perfect and eternal Being who governs the universe; and, next, that what thinks within each of us never will die. Since you desire to hear the reasons which have brought me to these conclusions, I cannot decline to state one or two of them at least—though this place, this occasion, and this dazzling company befit the subject far less, I fear, than if a few studious friends discussed it, sitting under the starry sky, on some quiet, unfrequented shore."
"Now we shall hear Plato," said Tiberius, with something almost like a sneer.
"Pardon me," said Dionysius, "Plato may speak for himself. You have him to read; why should I repeat him? Those who miss Plato's meaning in his own pages would miss it in my commentary."
Julia uttered a taunting laugh, as she glanced at her new husband Tiberius, whom she always treated with scorn.
"You remember, Augustus," Dionysius continued, "that a few minutes ago, Antistius Labio, in answering one of my questions, stated that a force which could move itself was more excellent, as such, than one which required to be set in motion by another, as the mind of the architect, said he, is superior to the stones from which he builds a palace. Labio then very justly added, in reply to another question, that what was moved only by the force of something else possessed no proper force of its own, its force being but a continuation of the first, an effect of the impact. He finally assented, when I showed that it is impossible that every thing without exception which possesses force should have received it, because not having goes before receiving, and because this is only another mode of saying that every thing without exception was once devoid of force. If a particular being has received the force it possesses, that particular being must once have been without it; and if all beings without exception who possess force have received it, they likewise without exception must all, in the same manner, have first been without it, a supposed state during which no force at all existed anywhere. That any being should ever acquire force, when there was nowhere any force for it to acquire, would be an unsatisfactory philosophy."
"There has, perhaps, been," said Tiberius, "an eternal chain of these forces transmitting themselves onward."
"If," said the Athenian, "you admit the existence of any one being who possesses a force which he never received from another, that being is evidently eternal. But to say that a being has received its force, is to say that its force has had a beginning; and to say that any thing begins, is to say that once it was not. A chain of forces all received is, therefore, a chain of forces all begun—is it not? Now, if they have all begun, they have all had something prior to them. But nothing can be prior to what is eternal; such a chain or series, therefore, cannot itself be eternal."
"No link is eternal," said Tiberius; "but all the links of the chain together may surely be so."
The Athenian looked round with a smile at Tiberius, and said, "If all the forces which exist now, and all those which ever existed in the universe, without exception, have been received from something else, what is that something else beyond all the forces of the universe? They would all without exception have begun. To say this of them, is merely to say that they were all non-existent once; and this without exception. In other words, the whole chain, even with all its links taken together, is short of eternal. If so, it has been preceded either by blank nothing, or by some being who has a force not thus received, a force which is his own inherently and absolutely, as I maintain. Tell me of a chain, the top of which recedes beyond our ken, that the lowest link depends on the next to it, and this on the third, I understand you; but if I ask what suspends the whole chain, with all its links taken together, it is no answer to say that the links are so numerous and the chain is so long that it requires nothing but itself to keep it in suspension. The longer it is, the greater must be the necessity of the ultimate grasp, and the stronger must that grasp be; and observe, it must be truly ultimate, otherwise you have not solved the difficulty; nay, the suspending force must be distinct from and beyond the chain itself, or you do not account for the suspension. But I will put all this past a cavil. What I said respecting proofs to Domitius Afer, I say respecting causes to Tiberius Cæsar. No one denies that various forces are operating in the universe. Now, of two things, one: Either there is a first force, acting and moving by its own freedom, which; being antecedent to all other forces, not only must be independent of them all, but can alone have produced them all; or else there is in the universe no force which has not some other antecedent to it. This last proposition is easily shown to be an absurdity; for to say that every force has a force antecedent to it, is the same as to say that all forces have another force antecedent to them; in other words, that, over and above all things of a given class, there is another thing of that class. Can there be more than the whole? Can there be another thing of a certain kind, beyond all things of that kind? Besides every force, is there yet another force? If any one is here who would say so, I wait to hear him."
No one said a word.
"Then remark the conclusion," pursued Dionysius. "It is a self-contradiction to contend that there can be one thing more of a class than all things of that class; therefore there is not, and cannot be, a force antecedent to every force in the universe; therefore there is, and must be, in the universe, a force which is the first force, a force which has not and could not have any other antecedent to it. Now this force, being the first, could be controlled by no other; by its action every other must have been produced, and under its control every other must lie."
"Do not you contradict yourself?" inquired Afer; "you show there cannot be a force antecedent to all forces, and still you conclude that there is."
"There cannot," said Dionysius, "be a force antecedent to all forces, because this would be one more of a class beyond all of a class. But there may be the first of the class, before which no other was; and this is what I have demonstrated to exist. That first force is antecedent, not to all, but to all others; there you stop; there is none antecedent to Him. As he is the first force, all things must have come from him. He made and built this universe; it is his imperial palace. You have asked me to prove that one eternal and omnipotent God lives. I have now given you an argument which I am by no means afraid, in this, or any other assembly, to call a demonstration. And it is but one out of a great many."
A low murmur of spontaneous plaudits and frank assent ran round that luxurious, but highly cultivated, appreciative, and brilliant company; and one voice a little too loud was heard exclaiming,
"It is as clear as the light of day, dear Dion!"
All eyes turned in one direction, and Paulus, whose feelings of admiration and sympathy had thus betrayed him, blushed scarlet as he withdrew behind the stately form of Germanicus, who looked round at him smiling, half in amusement, half in kindness.
"I do think it a demonstration indeed," said Augustus, musing gravely.
"How strangely must that stupendous Being," said Strabo, the geographer, "deem of a world which has come so completely to forget and ignore him!"
"Your reasoning," resumed Augustus, "differs much, as you said it would, from Plato's. Plato is too subtle for our Roman taste."
"So is he," said Dionysius, "too subtle, and, I think, too hesitating, for the taste of most men everywhere. I admire his genius, but I disclaim many of his theories, and am not a disciple of his school."
"Of what school are you?"
"I am dissatisfied with every school," replied the future convert of St. Paul, blushing. "But I am quite certain that there is only one God, and that he is eternal and all-perfect.
"What I have said, I have said because I believe it; not in order to play at mental swords with these eloquent and gifted men, whom I honor. There is, if we would look for it, a reflection of this great Being in our minds like that of a star in water; but the water must be undisturbed, or the light wavers and is broken. We see many beings, greater and smaller. Now, who can doubt that, where there are greater and smaller, there must be a greatest? Each one of us is conscious and certain of three things: first, that he himself has not existed from all eternity; secondly, each of us feels that he did not make his own mind; and thirdly, that he could not make another mind. Now, the mind who made ours must be superior to any thing contained in what he thus made; therefore, although we can conceive a being of whose power, knowledge, and perfection we discern no possible limit, this very conception must be inferior to its object. There must exist outside of our mind some being greater still than the greatest of which we can form any intellectual idea, however boundless. The lead fused in a mould cannot be greater in its outlines than the mould which presents the form. Again, no person will contend that the sublime and the absurd are one and the same thing—that the terms are convertible. But yet, if an absolutely perfect and sovereign being did not exist, the conception which we form of such a being, instead of constituting the highest heaven of sublimity to which our thoughts can soar, would constitute the lowest depth of absurdity into which they could sink."
A little pause followed.
"Do you, then," said Afer, with a subtle smile, "introduce to us the novel doctrine, that whatever is sublime must therefore be true?"
"If I said yes," replied Dionysius, "and I am not a little tempted, you would succeed in drawing me aside into a very long and darkling road. But I have advanced nothing to that effect. My inference depended not on assuming that every thing which is sublime must be true, but on the supposition that nothing which is absurd could be sublime."
"Quite so," remarked Haterius; "and was there not another inference dormant in what you said?"
"There was," said Dionysius; "but it looks like subtilizing to wake it and give it wings; and, as I am a Greek, I fear—I—in short, I have tried to confine myself to the plainest and broadest reasonings."
"Fear not," said Germanicus; "learned Greece, you know, has conquered her fierce vanquishers."
Tiberius gnawed his under-lip; and the Lady Plancina, glancing at him and then at her husband Cneius Piso, who was listening attentive but ill at ease, exclaimed,
"Enervated them, you mean!"
Germanicus threw back his head, smiled, and remarked, "To-morrow the legions are going forth to try against the Germans whether the Roman heart beats as of old; what was the further inference, Athenian?"
"Since there must," said Dion, "where greater and smaller beings exist, be a greatest, we can all try to form some conception of him. Now, this conception must fall short of his real greatness. Why? Because as I have demonstrated that this being is the first force, from which all others in the universe, including our minds, must have come, no idea contained in our minds can be greater than the very power which made those minds themselves. But, apart from this demonstration, every one of us can say, a being may exist so great as to be incapable of non-existence. Such a being is conceivable; it is his non-existence which then, by the very supposition, is inconceivable. Now, if there be something the non-existence of which would be inconceivable, while of the being himself you possess a notion, thinking of him as, for example, and terming him, the first force, eternal, boundless—giver of all, recipient of naught—the certainty of his existence is established already for the heart; for that faculty which precedes demonstration in accepting truth—for remember I have shown, and I have proved, that we are so made as to be compelled to believe far more than any of us can ever demonstrate."
"This, then," said Augustus, "is the dim image of which you spoke; the reflection of the star in water?"
"Yes, emperor," replied Dionysius; "but not always dim; the deepest and the purest of all the lights which that water reflects. Often it reflects no image, however; and often it reflects but clouds and storms. To say you truly conceive a thing, is to say you are certain of it in the way you conceive it. If you conceive any thing to be certain, you possess the certainty of it. You may be certain that a thing is uncertain; in other words, you have arrived at a clear notion of its uncertainty. To conceive the contingency of an object, is to possess the positive idea that it is contingent. To conceive a necessary being, is to have the clear idea not simply that he is, but that he must be. He could not be conceived at all, he could not even be an object of thought, as both necessary and non-existent. All conceivable objects, except one, are conceived as either possible or actual. But that one alone is conceived as necessary, and, therefore, necessarily actual. Either a necessary being is not conceivable—and which of us, I should like to know, cannot sit down and indulge in the conception?—or, if he be so much as conceivable, then his reign is recognized, because far more than his existence is involved—I mean the impossibility of his non-existence."
"Are all the dreams," said Domitius Afer, "of a poet's imagination truths because they are conceptions?"
A few moments of silence followed, and Paulus Æmilius looked at his friend with an expression of terror which he had not exhibited in his own contest with the Sejan horse.
"When the poet," replied Dionysius, "imagines what might have been, he believes it might have been, and asks you to believe no more; but he would be shocked if you believed less; would be shocked if you told him he was depicting not that which had not been, for this he cheerfully professes, but that which could not ever be supposed. What I say here," added the Athenian, "belongs to a different and somewhat higher plane of thought. The impossibility to suppose non-existent an infinitely perfect being, who, on the other hand, is himself found not impossible to suppose, ought to bring home to the heart the fact that he lives. To be able, in the first place, to conceive him existing, and straightway thereafter to feel an utter inability to form even the conception of his non-existence, because it is only as the necessary being and first force that we can think of him at all, are a handwriting upon the porch of every human soul. He lives, I say it rejoicing, an eternal, necessary, and personal reality; the very conception of him would be an impossibility if his existence were not a fact; yes, and far more than a fact, a primeval truth and a primordial necessity."
As the Athenian thus spoke in a clear and firm voice, which seemed to grow more musical the more it was raised and exerted, Augustus stood up and paced to and fro a few steps on the gravel walk of the impluvium, with his hands behind him and his eyes cast down. All who had been sitting rose at the same time, except Livia, Julia, Antonia, and the two Agrippinas.
"This," whispered Tiberius in Afer's ear, "is not much like failure, or derision, or disgrace for the Greek."
"My predecessor, Julius Cæsar," said Augustus at length, looking round as he stood still, "was the best astronomer and mathematician of his age—we have his calendar now to record it; the best engineer of his age—look at his bridge over the Rhine; the best orator, except one, to whom Rome perhaps ever listened; a most charming talker and companion on any subject; a very great and simple writer; as great a general probably as ever lived; a consummate politician; a keen, wary, swift, yet profound thinker at all times; a man whose intellect was one vast sphere of light; and yet I remember well in what anxiety and curiosity he lived respecting the power which governs the universe, and with what minute and even frivolous precautions he was forever trying to propitiate a good award for his various undertakings; how he muttered charms, whether he was ascending his chariot or descending, or mounting his horse or dismounting—in short, at every turn. Evidently it is not the brightest intellects, or the most perfectly educated, which are the most disposed to scout and scorn such ideas as we have just heard from Dionysius; it is precisely they who are prepared to ponder them the most."
"Julius Cæsar," said Tiberius, "thought, I suspect, pretty much as a great many others do, that this is a very dark, difficult subject; and that we cannot expect to come to any certain conclusions."
"Not to many conclusions," said Dionysius; "that much I fully grant. But two or three broad and general truths are attainable by means of reasonings as close, secure, and irresistible as any in geometry. One such proof—and pray do not forget that I said it was only one out of many—making clear the fact that a single eternal God reigns over all things, I have laid before Augustus and this company already. My last remarks, however, were not disputations, but were only intended to show how those conceptions—to tear which from the mind would be to tear the heat from fire and the rays from light—tend exactly to that conclusion which I had first established by a rigorous demonstration."
"Would not some call your inference from those conceptions themselves a demonstration also?" asked Germanicus.
"I think," replied the Athenian, "that all would so call it if we had but time to examine it thoroughly. There are three other complete lines of argument, however, each of them as interesting as a poem; but so abstruse that I will not travel along them. I will merely show the gates which open into these three ascents of the glorious mountain. It could, then, be demonstrated, first, that all things are objects of mind or of knowledge, somewhere; secondly, that all things undergo some action, or are objects of power, somewhere; thirdly, that all things are loved and cared for somewhere; and this as forming one whole work or production that is, in their relations with each other. Now, the knowledge, the power, and the love (or care) in question can belong only to that first force of whom I speak; and I distinctly affirm, Augustus, that I believe I should be quite able, not to prove by probable reasons merely, but to demonstrate positively and absolutely, the existence of one omnipotent God, by three distinct arguments, starting from the three points I have here mentioned. Yet I pass by those golden gates with a wistful glance at them, and no more."
"It is the horn gates, you know," said Labio, smiling, "which open to the true dreams."
"Ah! poor Virgil!" said Augustus, first with a smile, and then with a long, heart-felt sigh. "I wish he could have heard you, my Athenian."
"The natures of things," said the Athenian, "and the number of individuals are known and counted somewhere; the attraction of physical things is weighed in a balance somewhere, and all things are maintained in their order by limits, and protected in their relations by a measured mark, somewhere. But as I have forbidden myself this vast and difficult field, I will turn elsewhere."
"Before you turn elsewhere," exclaimed Antistius Labio, "I would fain test by a single question the soundness of the principle from which you will draw no deductions; you say all things undergo some action. Does not this imply the actual presence of some force in or upon all things?"
"It is not to be denied," answered the Athenian.
"What force," asked Labio, "is actually present in or upon inert matter?"
"The force of cohesion," replied the Athenian; "and, moreover, the force of weight, which I take to be only the same force with wider intervals ordained for its operation."
A dead pause of an instant or two followed, and was broken by Herod Agrippa, who was a person bad indeed and odious, but of great acuteness and natural abilities, exclaiming "The Athenian reminds me of the number, weight, and measure of our holy books."
"It is there, indeed, I found them," said Dionysius.
"You mentioned," observed Augustus, after musing a few seconds, "that the demonstration you gave us a while ago of a single eternal God was only one out of many. I do not want many more, nor several more; but one more, might gluttony ask of hospitality? We roam the halls of a great intellectual fortress and mental palace to-night, superior to the palace of the Mamurras."
"Has it such an impluvium, Augustus?" chuckled the old knight, caressing his white moustache.
"The impluvium," said Dionysius, "is that part of the palace where the light of heaven falls. But the palace, Augustus, I take to be the sublime theme; my poor mind is only its beggarly porter and ostiarius. Suppose, then, there were only two beings in all the universe, one more excellent than the other, which of them would have preceded the other?"
No one replied.
"If the inferior be the senior," pursued the Greek, "by so much as the superior afterward came to excel him, by so much that superior must have obtained his perfections from nothing whatever, from blank nonentity; because the inferior, by the very supposition, (ex hypothesi,) had them not to bestow."
"The superior being," answered Augustus, "must therefore be the elder."
"You speak justly, Augustus," said the Athenian. "Therefore the less perfect could never exist, if the more perfect had not first existed. The existence, then, of imperfect beings proves the prior existence of one all-perfect being, self-dependent, from whom the endowments of the others must unquestionably have been derived."
"Cannot things grow?" asked Labio.
"Growth is feeding," answered Dion; "growth is accretion, assimilation, condensation in one form of many scattered elements. Growth is possible, first, if we have a seed, that is, an organism capable, when fed, of filling out proportions defined beforehand; and, secondly, if we have the food by which it is sustained. But who defines the proportions? Who ordained the form? Who formed the seed? Who supplies the air, the light, the food? Would a seed grow of its own energy if not sown in fostering earth, or placed in fostering air and light—in short, if not fed by the proper natural juices? Would it grow if starved of air, earth, light—thrown back upon its sole self? Is not growth necessarily stimulated from without?"
"Growth is a complicated and manifold operation," said Augustus, "implying evidently a whole world previously set systematically in motion."
"Whence, Labio," asked the Athenian, "comes your seed that will grow?"
"From a plant," replied Labio.
"Whence the plant?" pursued the Greek.
"From a seed."
"Which was first?" asked Dion.
"The plant."
"Then that plant, at least, never came from a seed," said Dionysius. "Whence came it?"
"The seed was first," said Labio.
"Then that seed," said Dionysius, "never came from a plant. Whence came it?"
There was a laugh, in which not only Labio, but even Tiberius joined.
"No," said Dionysius; "whatever the power which traced out beforehand the limits and proportions which the seed, by growing or feeding, is to fill; whatever the power which surrounds that seed, or other organism, with the manifold conditions for its development, that power must be something more perfect and excellent than the elements which it thus dispenses and controls; and the existence of these less perfect things would have been impossible, had not the other existed first. Thus, ascending the scale of beings, from the less to the more excellent, the simple fact that each exists, proves that a being superior to it must somewhere else be found, and that the superior was in existence first; until we reach that self-existent, all-perfect, eternal being whose life accounts for a universe which his power governs, and which without him would have been an impossibility.
"Without him imperfect things could never have obtained existence, and could not keep it for an instant; and without recognizing him they cannot be explained. This, Augustus, is the second demonstration for which you have asked me. I have just touched, in passing, the porches which led to three others. A sixth could be derived from the nature of free force. No force is real which is not free. The force of a ball flung through the air, is really the force of something else, not of the ball; a hand imparted it; that hand was moved by the mind. In the mind at last, and there alone, the force becomes real, because there alone it is free. All the forces of nature could be shown to be thus communicated, or derivative; and the question, where do they originate? would ultimately bring us to some mind, some intelligence. That intelligence is God."
"Could not all the forces of the universe be blind and mechanical?" said Afer.
"If so, they would none of them be free," said the Athenian.
"Well, be it so," said Afer.
"If not free," persisted the Greek, "they are compulsory; if compulsory, who compels them? I say, God. You would have to say, nothing; which is very like having nothing to say."
A clamor of merriment followed this, and Dionysius had to wait until it subsided.
"I am only showing," he resumed, "where and how the proof could be found. A seventh demonstration can be derived from the moral law. To deny God, or to misdescribe him, would necessitate the denial of any difference between good and evil, between virtue and vice. It would be a little long, but very easy to establish this; far easier than it was to make intelligible the two proofs which I have already submitted to you. I have said enough, however. This brilliant assemblage perceives that the belief in one sovereign and omnipotent mind is not a vain reverie for which nothing substantial can be advanced; but a truth demonstrable, which neither human wit nor human wisdom can shake from its everlasting foundations."
"I wonder," said Strabo, "whether this being, of whose knowledge and power there are no limits, is also mild and compassionate."
Dionysius was buried in thought for a short time, and then said,
"Pray favor me with your attention for a few moments. Love draws nigh to its object; hatred draws away from its object, which it never approaches except in order to destroy it. But the non-existent cannot be destroyed; therefore the non-existent never could draw hatred toward it. Hatred would say, those things are non-existent which I should hate, and which I would destroy if they existed; therefore let them continue non-existent. But this sovereign being is antecedent to all things; in his mind alone could they have had any existence before he created them. If, then, he drew near them, so to speak, approached them, called them out of nothing into his own palace, the palace of being, love alone could have led him. Therefore, by the most rigorous reasoning, it is evident that creation is inexplicable except as an act of love. It is more an act of love than even preservation and protection. This omnipotent being, then, must be love in perpetual action; love in universal action, boundless and everlasting love."
"Certainly yours is a grand philosophy," said Augustus.
"This sublime being," pursued Dionysius, "is, and cannot but be, an infinite mind; he is boundless knowledge, boundless power, and boundless goodness. The mere continuance from day to day of this universe—"
Here the Athenian suddenly stopped and looked round.
"Why, were the most beneficent human being that ever lived," exclaimed he, "able by a word to cast the universe into destruction; were it in his power to say, at any moment of wrath or disappointment, that the sun should not rise on the morrow, mankind would fall into a chronic frensy of terror."
"If," cried a shrill voice—that of the child Caligula—"if the sun shines and one cannot see, it is no use! I know what I would do with the sun to-morrow morning, unless I recover the use of my eyes."
"What?" asked Dionysius.
"I'd blow it out!" cried the dear boy, tearing off his bandage, stamping his feet, and turning toward his interrogator a face neither beautiful in feature nor mild in expression.
"The sun is in good keeping," said the Athenian.
Augustus turned, after a short, brooding look at Caligula, to Haterius, and said,
"What think you, my Quintus? Has our Athenian made good his theories?"
"He has presented them like rocks of adamant," responded Haterius. "Dionysius has convinced me perfectly that the universe has been produced and is governed by the great being of whom he has so earnestly and so luminously spoken."
"Yet one word with you, young philosopher," said Antistius Labio, sending a glance all round the circle, and finally contemplating intently the broad, candid brow and kindly blue eyes of the Athenian; "one word! You remarked that you could prove all things to be cared for and loved somewhere. You afterward mentioned that the care or love in question could be exercised by none save the stupendous king-spirit whose existence, I confess, you almost persuade me to believe. But now solve me a difficulty. You have alluded to the moral law. You maintain, although this has not been a subject of our debate to-night, the immortality of our souls. Finally—none can forget it—you hinted that there could be no morality, no difference between right and wrong, virtue and vice, were there not one sovereign God. Does this mean, or does it not, that morality is that which pleases his eternal and therefore unchanging views?"
"Ah!" said Dionysius, "I perceive your drift. You land me amid real enigmas. But go on; I answer honestly—Yes."
"Then," pursued Labio, "if the ghost within us be immortal, it will be happy after death, provided it shall have pleased this being, and miserable should it have offended him."
"Yes."
"Now, Augustus," persisted Labio, "what would you think of the justice of a monarch who proclaimed rewards for conforming with his will, and punishments for thwarting it, but at the same time would not make it known what his will was, nor afford any protection to those who might be desirous of giving it effect?
"Can Dionysius of Athens or any body else tell us what are the special desires of this great being in our regard? Does he imagine that unlettered, mechanical, toiling men have either understandings or the leisure to arrive at the conclusions which his own splendid intellect has attained? Then why is there not some authoritative teacher sent down among men from heaven?"
Dionysius answered not. Labio continued,
"I speak roughly and plainly. I transfix him with his own principles. He is too honest not to feel the force of what I say. He cannot reply. Mark next: we live but a short while in this world; and if we be immortal, our state here is downright contemptible in importance compared with that which has to come; and yet he tells us that this contemptible point of time, this mere dot of existence, is to determine our lot for everlasting ages, and he that says this proclaims the being whose existence he certainly has demonstrated to be the very principle of love itself. Yet this being who will establish our destinies according as we please him, tells us not how to do it."
Again the Athenian refrained from breaking the expectant silence which ensued.
"Would not one imagine," said Strabo, "that the most particular instructions would be given to us how to regulate a conduct upon which so much depends?"
"Yes," observed Labio; "and not instructions alone, but instructors, to whom occasional reference would be always possible."
All eyes turned toward Dionysius. He blushed, hesitated, and at last said,
"You only echo thoughts long familiar to my mind. I cannot answer; I am not capable of solving these difficulties. Time is not completed. I think, like the Sibyls, that some special light is yet to come down from heaven."
Here the conversation ended.
Half an hour afterward, Dionysius, who had begged to be excused for that night from entering upon the second of the two doctrines which he had been challenged to sustain, was walking part of the way with Paulus toward the Inn of the Hundredth Milestone, along the fretwork of light which was shed upon the Appian Road by the moon and stars through the leaves of the chestnut-trees.
"I feel confident, Paulus," said he, "that Augustus will restore your family estates; and should you accept the liberal offer of Germanicus Cæsar, and depart upon this German expedition to-morrow morning, I will watch your interests while you are absent."
"I know it well, generous friend," replied the other youth; "and I do hope my mother will not object to my going. Only think, I may come back a military tribune! Only think!"
"Yes," said Dion, "and enter that great castle which glitters yonder in the moonlight as proprietor."
"If so, will you not," said Paulus, "come and stay with us?"
"That is an engagement," said the Athenian, "provided some day you will all pay me a return visit at Athens."
"We'll exchange the tessera hospitalis on it," exclaimed Paulus.
Thus they parted on the moonlit road, Dionysius returning to Formiæ, and Paulus walking onward with long, rapid strides.
TO BE CONTINUED.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.