Lycoris turned away; her eye fell on Barbillus. The handsome and expressive head of the oriental priest had a strange, fixed and lifeless look. And, in truth, the scene, which was now going forward in the arena, was well calculated to excite and impress such a man as Barbillus. He, absolutely bereft of convictions, felt the power of faith come home to his soul as a strange phenomenon. Brought up in his early youth by priests, and then trained at Athens in philosophy and sophistry, he had always been accustomed to regard everything supernatural from the vantage ground of mere self-interested trickery. The more devoutly and zealously his credulous followers gave themselves up to this jugglery, the more convinced he felt, that all faith was the result of a sickly hallucination—particularly in women, a disorder of the system, which must be dissipated like mist by the rough breath of reality. And that this ecstatic frenzy should carry grave and ripe men so far, that they could cling to it in defiance of the law of the land, and sacrifice their lives to a death of excruciating torment—this to the sensitive physique of the Asiatic was astounding, shocking! It was incomprehensible; a man—to all appearance a well-educated man, while his lofty brow indicated superior capacity—and that man believed! That man was at the point of death in witness of his belief—and he did not even tremble.
Barbillus pressed his hand to his heart, which seemed to be rising into his throat, and his breath rattled as he drew it.
The door, which barred the egress of the wild beasts from the dens, now opened. A lion came bounding into the arena, paused, looked round him, licked his fangs, and gave a mighty roar. Suddenly he started back a step or two. Calenus, who till this minute had stood upright, had dropped on to his knees; and clasping his cross with both hands, he held it up towards heaven, praying audibly:
“Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour! behold me about to die for Thy sake. And in dying I declare before all men: Thou alone art the Light and the Truth. O God, my God, have mercy upon me, for Thy Son’s sake, who died upon the cross for the redemption of the world.”
Dull murmurs, jeering laughter, and a few words of pity were heard as the blind man ended his prayer. The priest of Isis had turned paler than ever and perfectly rigid; he leaned forward; the veins in his forehead swelled, and his lips quivered. A thousand dancing flashes mocked his sight. His whole spirit was in torment under a fearful and paralyzing vision.
The cross, which the blind-man raised skywards, seemed to grow till it was four, five times as tall as the kneeling man. The galleries of the amphitheatre were deserted. The senators and vestal virgins vanished in smoke; the Sovereign of the World and his court were lost in thin air; every living creature was swallowed up in the yawning depths of a vast gulf. The splendid arcades were empty and silent, the marble and stucco facings dropped away from the pillars, clinking as they fell, till the rough masonry and brickwork of the main structure stood unadorned and bare. Nettles, darnel and ferns sprouted from every seam. Crows and daws fluttered in flocks from arch to arch, filling the air with melancholy croaking—but still, down there in the arena, the cross stood up on its stone plinth, the triumphant emblem of a despised faith, whose adherents were torn to pieces to feast lions and tigers by Caesar’s commands.
Barbillus sat gazing at the awful picture, that his brain had raised, his eyes almost starting out of his head. He wanted to shriek, but he was speechless; only a choked rattle came from his lips, a groan of torture and terror. Utterly overpowered and bewildered, he covered his face with his robe. A roar of applause roused him from his trance, and he looked up once more. The hideous vision was gone. There sat Caesar on his purple throne, and the wind still flapped the waving screen. A hoarse growl resounded through the arena, the lion crouched for his spring, and in a moment was standing victorious over the body of his defenceless prey. Calenus was no more than a bleeding and lifeless mass.
Barbillus rose from his seat, tottering and half-stunned; the ground seemed to burn under his feet. He hastily made his way out. “When, when is this vision to be fulfilled?”[152] he asked in his trembling soul. Then he rushed home, bolted himself up in his room, and wrote:
“I, Barbillus, the priest of Isis, saw on the second day of the secular games, in the sixteenth year of Domitian, a wonderful vision—whether sent me by the gods (if gods there be), or a trick played me by some daemon. I thought I saw with these eyes things which were not there to be seen....” So he wrote, and told his story.
In the Flavian Amphitheatre meanwhile—the Coliseum as it is now called—the bloody festival goes on—only interrupted for a while by the dinner-hour—till supper-time puts an end to it for to-day.[153] Tired and exhausted, but not yet satiated with blood, the Roman people withdraw to the triclinium, to discuss the incidents of the day over sparkling Falernian or the muddy liquor of Veii. All are looking forward to the morrow, for each day of this glorious festival is to be more delightful than the last.