Suddenly a strange noise rang out from the interior, a deafening and resonant series of shocks, while triumphant howls of the crowd rose to the sky.
"Bring ropes, ropes! Hide her immodest limbs!"
In a hubbub of hymns and wild laughter the mob, by means of ropes, dragged out of the temple the superb silver body of the goddess, which had been moulded by Scopas. Step by step, it came thundering down.
"Cast her in the fire! in the fire!"
The figure was dragged into the muddy market-place. There a monk was declaiming a passage from the celebrated edict of Constantine II, the brother of Constantius—
"'Let there be an end of superstition, and let sacrifices be abolished' (Cesset superstitio sacrificiorum, aboleatur insania!).
"Fear nothing; break, sack, plunder everything in that temple of demons!" Another was reading by torchlight from a parchment scroll the following words from the book De errore profanarum religionum, by Firmicus Maternus—
"Divine Emperors! Come! succour the unfortunate heathen. Let us snatch them by force from hell rather than leave them to perish. Seize the temple-ornaments and let their riches feed your treasury. Let him who sacrifices to idols be torn from the earth, root and branch (Sacrificans diis eradicabitur). Thou shalt deliver him to death; thou shalt stone him with stones, were that offender thy son, thy brother, or the wife that sleeps upon thy heart!"
And over the crowd swept the exultant shout—
"Death! Death to the gods of Olympus!"