"Sweet Lydia!" Agrippa protested. "Roman hard-headedness hath turned thee against our traditions!"
"But the Egyptian did not picture such a man," Classicus said very gently. "He went to the other extreme, so far that his hearers had to contemplate an image of a carpenter's son, elected to a leadership over a horde of slaves and outcasts and visionary aristocrats; who taught a doctrine of submission, poverty and love, and who finally was crucified for blasphemy during a popular uproar."
"It hath the recommendation of being different!" Lydia declared frankly. "Tell me more."
"There is no more."
"What! Is it dead?" she insisted. "Dead as all the others? Then it is different only in its inception."
"No," said Agrippa thoughtfully; "it is not dead, but dying hard. The Sanhedrim is punishing its followers in Jerusalem at present. Thou rememberest, Cypros; Marsyas was charged with the apostasy."
"So material as to engage the Sanhedrim?" Lydia pursued.
"We hear," responded Classicus, "that Jerusalem and even Judea are unsafe for them, and numbers have appeared in the city of late—"
"Among us?" Lydia asked.
"No; in Rhacotis," replied Classicus; whereupon Flaccus raised an inquiring eye.