"I hold not altogether that way," replied the youth. "I belong rather to the eclectic school. My father, Apollodorus, was a priest of Phoebus, and named me, like himself, from the sungod, whom he worshipped; but I found the party of Isis fashionable at court, so I even changed my name and colours to the winning side. When one is at Rome, you know, he must do as the Romans do."
"Yes, like the degenerate Romans, who forsake the old gods, under whom the State was great and virtuous and strong," said the soldier, with an angry gesture. "The more gods, the worse the world becomes. But this new edict will make short work of some of them."
"With the Christians you mean," said the supple Greek. "A most pernicious sect, that deserve extermination with fire and sword."
"I know little about them," replied Sertorius, with a sneer, "save that they have increased prodigiously of late. Even in the army and the palace are those known to favour their obscene and contemptible doctrines."
"'Tis whispered that even their sacred highnesses the Empresses Prisca and Valeria are infected with their grovelling superstition," said the Greek secretary. "Certain it is, they seem to avoid being present at the public sacrifices, as they used to be. But the evil sect has its followers chiefly among the slaves and vile plebs of the poorest Transtiberine region of Rome."
"What do they worship, anyhow?" asked the centurion, with an air of languid curiosity. "They seem to have no temples, nor altars, nor sacrifices."
"They have dark and secret and abominable rites," replied the fawning Greek, eager to gratify the curiosity of his patron with popular slanders against the Christians. "'Tis said they worship a low-born peasant, who was crucified for sedition. Some say he had an ass's head,[1] but that, I doubt not, is a vulgar superstition; and one of our poets, the admirable Lucian, remarks that their doctrine was brought to Rome by a little hook-nosed Jew, named Paulus, who was beheaded by the divine Nero over yonder near the Ostian gate, beside the pyramid of Cestius, which you may see amongst the cypresses. They have many strange usages. Their funeral customs, especially, differ very widely from the Greek or Roman ones. They bury the body, with many mysterious rites, in vaults or chambers underground, instead of burning it on a funeral pyre. They are rank atheists, refusing to worship the gods, or even to throw so much as a grain of incense on their altar, or place a garland of flowers before their shrines, or even have their images in their houses. They are a morose, sullen, and dangerous people, and are said to hold hideous orgies at their secret assemblies underground, where they banquet on the body of a newly-slain child.[2] See yonder," he continued, pointing to a low-browed arch almost concealed by trees in a neighbouring garden, "is the entrance to one of their secret crypts, where they gather to celebrate their abominable rites, surrounded by the bones and ashes of the dead. A vile and craven set of wretches; they are not fit to live.
"They are not all cravens; to that I can bear witness," interrupted Sertorius. "I knew a fellow in my own company—Lannus was his name—who, his comrades said, was a Christian. He was the bravest and steadiest fellow in the legion; —saved my life once in Libya;—rushed between me and a lion, which sprang from a thicket as I stopped to let my horse drink at a stream—as it might be the Anio, there. The lion's fangs met in his arm, but he never winced. He may believe what he pleases for me. I like not this blood-hound business of hunting down honest men because they worship gods of their own. But the Emperor's edict is written, as you may say, with the point of a dagger—'The Christian religion must everywhere be destroyed.'"
"And quite right, too, your Excellency," said the soft-smiling Greek. "They are seditious conspirators, the enemies of Cæsar and of Rome."
"A Roman soldier does not need to learn of thee, hungry Greekling,"[3] exclaimed the centurion, haughtily, "what is his duty to his country!"