“Your throat, you mean,” said Jucundus; “a cautious man! lest you should steal a draught or two of good strong air.”
“And lastly,” said he, “I did not bring my pence, [pg 84]and then he tied my hands to a gibbet, and hung me up in terrorem.”
“There I came in,” said Arnobius; “he seemed a pretty boy, so I cut him down, paid his æra, and took him home.”
“And now he is your pupil?” asked Jucundus.
“Not yet,” answered Arnobius; “he is still a day-scholar of the old wolf’s; one is like another; he could not change for the better: but I am his bully, and shall tutorize him some day. He’s a sharp lad, isn’t he, Firmian?” turning to the boy; “a great hand at composition for his years; better than I am, who never shall write Latin decently. Yet what can I do? I must profess and teach, for Rome is the only place for the law, and these city professorships are not to be despised.”
“Whom are you attending here?” asked Jucundus, drily.
“You are the only man in Sicca who needs to ask the question. What! not know the great Polemo of Rhodes, the friend of Plotinus, the pupil of Theagenes, the disciple of Thrasyllus, the hearer of Nicomachus, who was of the school of Secundus, the doctor of the new Pythagoreans? Not feel the presence in Sicca of Polemo, the most celebrated, the most intolerable of men? That, however, is not his title, but the ‘godlike,’ or the ‘oracular,’ or the ‘portentous,’ or something else as impressive. Every one goes to him. He is the rage. I should not have a chance of success if I could not say that I had attended his [pg 85]lectures; though I’d be bound our little Firmian here would deliver as good. He’s the very cariophyllus of human nature. He comes to the schools in a litter of cedar, ornamented with silver and covered with a lion’s skin, slaves carrying him, and a crowd of friends attending, with the state of a proconsul. He is dressed in the most exact style; his pallium is of the finest wool, white, picked out with purple; his tresses flow with unguent, his fingers glitter with rings, and he smells like Idalium. As soon as he puts foot on earth, a great hubbub of congratulation and homage breaks forth. He takes no notice; his favourite pupils form a circle round him, and conduct him into one of the exedræ, till the dial shows the time for lecture. Here he sits in silence, looking at nothing, or at the wall opposite him, talking to himself, a hum of admiration filling the room. Presently one of his pupils, as if he were præco to the duumvir, cries out, ‘Hush, gentlemen, hush! the godlike’—no, it is not that. I’ve not got it. What is his title? ‘the Bottomless,’ that’s it—‘the Bottomless speaks.’ A dead silence ensues; a clear voice and a measured elocution are the sure token that it is the outpouring of the oracle. ‘Pray,’ says the little man, ‘pray, which existed first, the egg or the chick? Did the chick lay the egg, or the egg hatch the chick?’ Then there ensues a whispering, a disputing, and after a while a dead silence. At the end of a quarter of an hour or so, our præco speaks again, and this time to the oracle. ‘Bottomless man,’ he says, ‘I have to represent to you that no one of [pg 86]the present company finds himself equal to answer the question, which your condescension has proposed to our consideration!’ On this there is a fresh silence, and at length a fresh effatum from the hierophant: ‘Which comes first, the egg or the chick? The egg comes first in relation to the causativity of the chick, and the chick comes first in relation to the causativity of the egg,’ on which there is a burst of applause; the ring of adorers is broken through, and the shrinking professor is carried in the arms or on the shoulders of the literary crowd to his chair in the lecture-room.”
Much as there was in Arnobius’s description which gratified Jucundus’s prejudices, he had suspicions of his young acquaintance, and was not in the humour to be pleased unreservedly with those who satirized anything whatever that was established, or was appointed by government, even affectation and pretence. He said something about the wisdom of ages, the reverence due to authority, the institutions of Rome, and the magistrates of Sicca. “Do not go after novelties,” he said to Arnobius; “make a daily libation to Jove, the preserver, and to the genius of the emperor, and then let other things take their course.”
“But you don’t mean I must believe all this man says, because the decurions have put him here?” cried Arnobius. “Here is this Polemo saying that Proteus is matter, and that minerals and vegetables are his flock; that Proserpine is the vital influence, and Ceres the efficacy of the heavenly bodies; that there are mundane spirits, and supramundane; and then his [pg 87]doctrine about triads, monads, and progressions of the celestial gods?”
“Hm!” said Jucundus; “they did not say so when I went to school; but keep to my rule, my boy, and swear by the genius of Rome and the emperor.”