And in those very caves, four hundred years later, there came and lived a boy a little younger than Nero was, and amid the pleasances of the villas, which had fallen to ruin, and in the lonely caverns high up among the hills, he made his solitary home. He had deserted the world, disgusted and disillusioned with the wickedness of Rome. And once, when the passions of the flesh seemed to threaten him, he rushed out of his cave and rolled his naked body on the thorns where now the roses grow. And multitudes were struck by his holiness and self-devotion, and monasteries rose on every crag, and the scene, once desecrated by the enchantments of the sorceress Sense, was purified by the feet of saintly men, and the cavern where young slaves had lurked in the guise of the demons of the Gentiles is now called the Holy Cave.
That boy of fourteen was Benedict. The name of Nero has rotted for more than eighteen centuries, but to this day the memory of St. Benedict is fragrant as his own roses; for
‘Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.’
CHAPTER XVIII
VESPASIAN’S FARM
‘At secura quies, et nescia fallere vita,
Dives opum variarum, at latis otia fundis,
Mugitusque boum, mollesque sub arbore somni,