‘“You must live for another, if you wish to live for yourself.”
‘“In every good man, God dwells.”[21]
‘I could read you many more thoughts like these from Seneca’s letters. Are they not true and beautiful?’
‘I wish his own acts were as true and beautiful,’ answered Britannicus. ‘But what has this to do with the Christians?’
‘This: every one of those thoughts, and many much deeper, are commonplaces among Christians; but the difference between them and the worshippers of the gods is that they possess other truths which make these real. They alone are innocent.’
‘And they do not worship an ass’s head? Well, at any rate, Christus or Chrestus, whom they do worship, was crucified in Palestine by Pontius Pilatus.’
‘And does suffering prevent a man from being divine? All Romans worship Hercules, yet they believe, or profess to believe, that he was burnt alive on Œta.’
Britannicus was silent, for he had always thought it a colossal insanity on the part of the Christians to worship one who had been crucified like a slave.
‘Tell me,’ said Pomponia, ‘when Epictetus reads you his notes of the lectures of Musonius, does not the name of Socrates sometimes occur in them?’
‘Yes,’ said the young prince; ‘it occurs constantly. Musonius talked of Socrates as a perfect pattern, and all but divine.’