CHAPTER XXXVII
TWO WOEFUL SOULS RELEASED
It was a little before mid-day, and the forum and market-place of Puteoli were filled with a throng which represented a mingling of different races, avocations, and professions. Some were in favorite places of resort, passing the hours in dolce far niente, and even the busy ones moved leisurely under the influence of the soft and luxurious atmosphere of southern Italy. Life among all classes was spent mainly out-of-doors, or in public places like the temples, baths, forum, or porticos. Simply to exist in such a climate was a dreamy luxury. The passive enjoyment of the present hour barred out any anxious future. If an earthquake caused some trembling of the immediate environment to-day, they were yet willing to let to-morrow take care for the things of itself.
Here and there was a sleek and luxurious Roman noble, a senator, or perchance some member of the court of Nero, whose country home was on the coast, jostled by merchants and seamen from every clime of the then known world. The long toga of the magistrate or lawyer was brushed by the picturesque costume of the peasant, the embroidered tunic of the pleasure-seeker, or perchance the rags of a beggar.
Here, as in the neighboring cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, Grecian art had taken early root, and frescos, carvings, and other ornate decoration covered every available space.
Near the heart of the business quarter on the side of a colonnade were the stalls of the money-changers, with their shining heaps in full view, which were the fruit of exchanges of the coins of many nations, the corn, animal products, and merchandise of which were landed here on the way to the Eternal City. At intervals the statue of some one of the Cæsars, a triumphal arch, a bronze or marble god or goddess, with frequent fountains whose iridescent spray danced and sparkled in the sunlight, gave variety and artistic beauty to the scene.
Petty traders displayed their varied wares, and artificers fashioned their handiwork and deftly exercised their different crafts with a well-ordered professional skill. The easy-going life of the great majority, to outward appearance, seemed like a long-drawn-out poetic revery. Gayety and love of pleasure and show glistened on the surface of the complex river of life that flowed smoothly along.
The temple of Jupiter occupied one side of the forum, and a straggling and variable procession passed in and out, who came to pay their devotions to the chief god of the Roman state. In plain sight of the temple, fronting on a narrow street which led from the forum, and on the same side, was a plain, square building, somewhat resembling a Jewish synagogue. This was the meeting-place of a small congregation of the members of the New Faith, which was composed of divers races, including a [pg 465]few Jews who had left behind their national ceremonialism. The outgoing waves of the new spiritual movement in the East had reached this distant shore, and, chiefly through the influence of Marcius and Rebecca, had crystallized into an organization.
Up to this time there had been no dangerous persecution, though much prejudice and dishonor had been visited upon the disciples. They had been contemptuously designated as “atheists,” “despisers of the fine arts,” “maligners of the gods and the temple,” and by common reputation rated as disloyal to the “divine Cæsar.”