Juba stood up with a look of offended dignity, and, as on former occasions, tossed the head which had been by implication disparaged. “I despise you,” he said.
“Well, but you are hard on the Christians,” said Aristo. “I have heard them maintain that their superstition, if adopted, would be the salvation of Rome. They maintain that the old religion is gone or going out; that something new is wanted to keep the empire together; and that their worship is just fitted to the times.”
“All I say to the vipers,” said Jucundus, “is, ‘Let well alone. We did well enough without you; we did well enough till you sprang up.’ A plague on their insolence; as if Jew or Egyptian could do aught for us when Numa and the Sibyl fail. That is what I say, Let Rome be true to herself and nothing can harm her; let her shift her foundation, and I would not buy her for this water-melon,” he said, taking a suck at it. “Rome alone can harm Rome. Recollect old Horace, ‘Suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit.’ He was a prophet. If she falls, it is by her own hand.”
“I agree,” said Cornelius; “certainly, to set up any new worship is treason; not a doubt of it. The gods keep us from such ingratitude! We have grown great by means of them, and they are part and parcel of the law of Rome. But there is no great chance of our forgetting this; Decius won’t; that’s a fact. You will see. Time will show; perhaps to-morrow, perhaps next day,” he added, mysteriously.
“Why in the world should you have this frantic dread of these poor scarecrows of Christians,” said Aristo, “all because they hold an opinion? Why are you not afraid of the bats and the moles? It’s an opinion: there have been other opinions before them, and there will be other opinions after. Let them alone and they’ll die away; make a hubbub about them and they’ll spread.”
“Spread?” cried Jucundus, who was under the twofold excitement of personal feeling and of wine, “spread, they’ll spread? yes, they’ll spread. Yes, grow, like scorpions, twenty at a birth. The country already swarms with them; they are as many as frogs or grasshoppers; they start up everywhere under one’s nose, when one least expects them. The air breeds them like plague-flies; the wind drifts them like locusts. No one’s safe; any one may be a Christian; it’s an epidemic. Great Jove! I may be a Christian before I know where I am. Heaven and earth! is it not monstrous?” he continued, with increasing fierceness. “Yes, Jucundus, my poor man, you may wake and find yourself a Christian, without knowing it, [pg 58]against your will. Ah! my friends, pity me! I may find myself a beast, and obliged to suck blood and live among the tombs as if I liked it, without power to tell you how I loathe it, all through their sorcery. By the genius of Rome something must be done. I say, no one is safe. You call on your friend; he is sitting in the dark, unwashed, uncombed, undressed. What is the matter? Ah! his son has turned Christian. Your wedding-day is fixed, you are expecting your bride; she does not come; why? she will not have you; she has become a Christian. Where’s young Nomentanus? Who has seen Nomentanus? in the forum, or the campus, in the circus, in the bath? Has he caught the plague or got a sunstroke? Nothing of the kind; the Christians have caught hold of him. Young and old, rich and poor, my lady in her litter and her slave, modest maid and Lydia at the Thermæ, nothing comes amiss to them. All confidence is gone; there’s no one we can reckon on. I go to my tailor’s: ‘Nergal,’ I say to him, ‘Nergal, I want a new tunic,’ The wretched hypocrite bows, and runs to and fro, and unpacks his stuffs and cloths, like another man. A word in your ear. The man’s a Christian, dressed up like a tailor. They have no dress of their own. If I were emperor, I’d make the sneaking curs wear a badge, I would; a dog’s collar, a fox’s tail, or a pair of ass’s ears. Then we should know friends from foes when we meet them.”
“We should think that dangerous,” said Cornelius; “however, you are taking it too much to heart; you [pg 59]are making too much of them, my good friend. They have not even got the present, and you are giving them the future, which is just what they want.”
“If Jucundus will listen to me,” said Aristo, “I could satisfy him that the Christians are actually falling off. They once were numerous in this very place; now there are hardly any. They have been declining for these fifty years; the danger from them is past. Do you want to know how to revive them? Put out an imperial edict, forbid them, denounce them. Do you want them to drop away like autumn leaves? Take no notice of them.”
“I can’t deny that in Italy they have grown,” said Cornelius; “they have grown in numbers and in wealth, and they intermarry with us. Thus the upper class becomes to a certain extent infected. We may find it necessary to repress them; but, as you would repress vermin, without fearing them.”
“The worshippers of the gods are the many, and the Christians are the few,” persisted Aristo; “if the two parties intermarry, the weaker will get the worst of it. You will find the statues of the gods gradually creeping back into the Christian chapel; and a man must be an honest fellow who buys our images, eh, Jucundus?”