Melting they fall, and sink into the heart.’
‘He may have the gift of speech,’ said Seneca; ‘many Orientals have. But it is monstrous to suppose that a fanatical Jew, with a senseless creed, should have anything to teach us.’
‘Has he written anything?’ asked Flavius Sabinus.
‘Yes; he has written some wonderful letters—a strange mixture (as friends in Palestine told me) of fantastic doctrine and perfect ethics.’
‘Has he taught a single moral truth which has not been taught for four centuries, since Aristotle and Plato and Chrysippus?’ asked Seneca.
‘I have not read his letters,’ said Julius. ‘They were difficult to get hold of, for the Christians are very shy about their writings. But he lives the truth he teaches.’
‘Ah!’ said Seneca; ‘if he has the secret of that—! As for us, too many of us are open to the reproach that we are only philosophers by wearing beards.’
‘Well,’ said Titus, ‘I have been to hear the lectures of Musonius Rufus, and I defy any mortal man to teach better truths than he and Cornutus do; for I must not speak of the illustrious Seneca in his presence. We have no need to consult barbarian Jews with insane new mythologies.’
Pomponia and Claudia and Pudens were of necessity silent in that mixed company; but they thought that the good soil of the Christian faith was the one thing lacking to Seneca, which might have made the roses of his moral teaching produce something better than mere perfume.
And if Titus had but laid aside the ignorant disdain which marked him in common with the mass of philosophic Pagans, his manly virtues might have shone forth with yet more beautiful lustre, and he might have been saved from the sins and errors wherewith he afterwards defiled a noble name.