"What is it?" Flaccus insisted.
"A new Messiah!"
"Oh," Agrippa cried wearily, "a new Messiah! How many in the past generation, Cypros? Ten, twenty, a hundred? Alas! Classicus, that thou shouldst serve up as new something which every Jew hath expected and discovered and rejected for the last three thousand years."
"O happy race!" Junia exclaimed; "which hath something to which to look forward! But what is a Messiah?"
"A god," said Agrippa.
"The anointed king," Cypros corrected hastily, "of godly origin that shall restore the Jews to dominion over the world!"
"Mirabile dictu!" Junia cried.
"Olympian Jove!" Flaccus exclaimed, smiting his muscular leg. "What a task, what an ambition, what an achievement! I behold Cæsar's dudgeon. Go on, Classicus; though it be old to thy remarkable race, used to aspiring to the scope of Olympus, let us hear, who have never wished to be more than Cæsar!"
"It is not so much of the Messiah," Classicus responded, smiling, "as his—school, if it may be so called. One of the followers appeared at the Library some time ago, perchance as long as three years ago—an Egyptian of the upper classes, much traveled, and told such a remarkable tale of the Messiah's birth and death that he instantly lost caste for truthfulness."
"Alas!" Lydia exclaimed in a tone of disappointment. "Why will they insist that the Messiah must be a miraculous creature, demeanored like the pagan gods and proceeding through the uproar of tumbling satrapies to the high place of Supreme Necromancer of the Universe!"