Bescribbled all o’er with the nonsense of all.”
And I told him that I should put up a notice like that at the Portus Portuensis, which begs boys and idlers not to scarify (scarificare) the walls. But while I was writing the lines, I caught sight of an odd picture which some one had scratched there. It was a figure with an ass’s head on a cross, and underneath it “Alexamenos adores God.”I asked Titus what it meant, and suggested that it was a satire on the worship of the Egyptian Anubis. But Titus said, “No! that is intended to annoy the Christians.”’[20]
‘Well, Britannicus,’ said Pomponia, ‘I know something more about these poor Christians than that. All these are lies. I dare say you have read, or Sosibius has read to you, some of the writings of Seneca?’
‘No,’ said Britannicus, reddening. ‘Seneca is my brother Nero’s tutor. It is he, and Agrippina, and Pallas, who have done away with the will of my father, Claudius. I don’t care to hear anything he says. He is not a true philosopher, like Musonius or Cornutus. He only writes fine things which he does not believe.’
‘A man may write very true things, Prince,’ said Pomponia, ‘yet not live up to them. I have here some of his letters, which his friend Lucilius has shown me. Let me read you a few passages.’
She took down the scroll of purple vellum, on which she had copied some of the letters, and, unrolling it, read a sentence here and there:—
‘“God is near you, is with you, is within you. A sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and our good; there is no good man without God.”
‘“What advantage is it that anything is hidden from man? Nothing is closed to God.”
‘“Even from a corner it is possible to spring up into heaven. Rise, therefore, and form thyself into a fashion worthy of God.”
‘“Do you wish to render the gods propitious? Be virtuous; to honour them it is enough to imitate them.”