Hekebolius.
Yes, yes, yes——!
Julian.
[Embracing him.] My Hekebolius!—Wisdom; light; beauty!
ACT SECOND.
SCENE FIRST.
A spacious vestibule in the Emperor’s Palace, at Antioch. An open entrance in the background; on the left is a door, leading into the inner rooms.
On a raised seat in the foreground, to the right, sits the Emperor Julian, surrounded by his court. Judges, Orators, Poets, and Teachers, among them Hekebolius, sit on lower seats around him. Leaning against the wall near the entrance stands A Man, dressed as a Christian Priest; he hides his face in his hands, and seems rapt in prayer. A great gathering of citizens fills the hall. Guards at the entrance, and at the door on the left.
Julian.
[Addressing the assemblage.] So great success have the gods vouchsafed me. Hardly a single city have I approached on my journey, whence whole troops of Galileans have not streamed forth to meet me on the road, lamenting their errors, and placing themselves under the protection of the divine powers. Compared with this, what signifies the senseless behaviour of the scoffers? May not the scoffers be likened to dogs, who in their ignorance yelp at the moon? Yet I will not deny that I have learned with indignation that some inhabitants of this city have spoken scornfully of the rule of life which I have enjoined on the priests of Cybele, the good goddess. Ought not reverence for so exalted a divinity to protect her servants from mockery? I say to those foolhardy men: Are ye barbarians, since ye know not who Cybele is? Must I solemnly remind you how, when the power of Rome was so gravely threatened by that Punic commander, whose grave I saw not long since in Libyssa, the Cumaean Sybil counselled that the statue of Cybele should be taken from the temple in Pessinus, and brought to Rome? As to the priests’ way of life, some have wondered that they should be forbidden to eat roots, and everything that grows along the earth, while they are allowed to partake of upward-growing herbs and fruits. Oh, how dense is your ignorance—I pity you if you cannot understand this! Can the spirit of man find nourishment in that which creeps along the ground? Does not the soul live by all that yearns upward, towards heaven and the sun? I will not enter more largely into these matters to-day. What remains to be said you shall learn from a treatise I am composing during my sleepless nights, which I hope will shortly be recited both in the lecture-halls and on the market-places.