An Arian monk of gigantic stature, his lank black hair plastered to his sweaty face, heaved an axe above the goddess, seeking where to strike.
A voice advised—
"In the belly! In her abominable belly!"
The great silver body rolled over mutilated; the blows rang pitiless, leaving gaps bitten in the metal.
An old pagan stood by and veiled his face from the sacrilege. He was secretly weeping at the thought that now the end of the world, the end of everything, was come, for the earth would no longer bring forth a blade of corn.
A hermit from the deserts of Mesopotamia, clothed in sheepskin, wearing coarse sandals and an empty gourd slung from his shoulder, stood over the statue, sheep-crook in hand—
"This forty years I have never washed, that I might not see my nakedness, nor fall into temptation. And yet coming into cities, straight one perceives these accursed gods without a rag upon them. How long must we endure these devilish temptations! At the hearth, in the street, on the roof, in the baths, these idols everywhere above one's head?... Faugh! Faugh! Faugh! How can I spit enough disgust on things like these?"
The old man spurned the prostrate woman's form with his sandal in energetic horror; stamped on the bare breast as if it were alive, and kept scoring it with the sharp nails of his sandals, stuttering with rage—
"Take that, and that—and that, O foul immodesty!"
The lips of the goddess lay with their calm smile under the soles of his feet.