"A modest ambition!"
"A great one. How many monarchs are forgotten while Aspasia is remembered! Who were the reigning kings during Sappho's time?"
"But go on. You repose much on her influence. Perhaps she has the will but not the power to help you."
"Power! She is the mistress of John of Gischala and actual potentate over Jerusalem at this hour."
"Unless Simon bar Gioras hath taken the upper hand within the last few days. Remember the fortunes of factionists are ephemeral."
Philadelphus jingled his harness. He was sorry that he had permitted this discussion. Now its continuance was particularly irritating, when he had rather think of something else. He was near Jerusalem; but he was not going forward, now, with the same eagerness, nor with the same enthusiasm for his cause. The incident in the hills had marked the change in him. It was not, then, with a patient tongue that he defended his intentions, which had grown less inviting in the last hour.
"How little your wife will enjoy her," Julian's smooth voice broke in once more, "seeing that the frail one is lovely."
"I do not know that she is lovely."
"What!" Julian exclaimed in genuine amazement. "You do not know that she is lovely! Years of correspondence with a woman whom you do not know to be lovely! Reposing kingdoms on a woman's influence whom you do not know to be beautiful!"
"Beauty is no tie," the Maccabee retorted. "Have you forgotten Salome, the Jewish actress who could play Aphrodite in the theaters of Ephesus, to the confusion of the goddess herself? They said she snared three procurators and an emperor at one performance and lost them in a day!"