'And what so wonderful,' said Julia, 'in a morning sacrifice? The temples are open every morning, are they not?'
'Yes, truly are they,' rejoined Milo; 'but not for so great a purpose, nor witnessed by so great crowds. Curio wished me to have been there, and says nothing could have been more propitious. They died as the gods love to have them.'
'Was there no bellowing nor struggling, then?' said Julia.
'Neither, Curio assures me; but they met the knife of the priest as they would the sword of an enemy on the field of battle.'
'How say you?' said Julia, quickly, turning pale; 'do I hear aright, Milo, or are you mocking? God forbid that you should speak of a human sacrifice.'
'It is even so, mistress. And why should it not be so? If the favor of the gods, upon whom we all depend, as the priests tell us, is to be purchased so well in no other way, what is the life of one man, or of many, in such a cause? The great Gallienus, when his life had been less ordered than usual after the rules of temperance and religion, used to make amends by a few captives slain to Jupiter; to which, doubtless, may be ascribed his prosperous reign. But, as I was saying, there was, so Curio informed me at the market not long afterwards, a sacrifice, on the private altar of the temple, of ten captives. Their blood flowed just as the great god of the temple showed himself in the horizon. It would have done you good, Curio said, to see with what a hearty and dexterous zeal Fronto struck the knife into their hearts—for to no inferior minister would he delegate the sacred office.'
'Lucius,' cried Julia, 'I thought that such offerings were now no more. Is it so, that superstition yet delights itself in the blood of murdered men?'
'It is just so,' I was obliged to reply. 'With a people naturally more gentle and humane than we of Rome this custom would long ago have fallen into disuse. They would have easily found a way, as all people do, to conform their religious doctrine and offerings to their feelings and instincts. But the Romans, by nature and long training, lovers of blood, their country built upon the ruins of others, and cemented with blood—the taste for it is not easily eradicated. There are temples where human sacrifices have never ceased. Laws have restrained their frequency—have forbidden them, under heaviest penalties, unless permitted by the state—but these laws ever have been, and are now evaded; and it is the settled purpose of Fronto, and others of his stamp, to restore to them their lost honors, and make them again, as they used to be, the chief rite in the worship of the gods. I am not sorry, Julia, that your doubts, though so painfully, have yet been so effectually, removed.'
Julia had for some time blamed, as over-ardent, the zeal of the Christians. She had thought that the evil of the existing superstitions was over-estimated, and that it were wiser to pursue a course of more moderation; that a system that nourished such virtues as she found in Portia, in Tacitus, and others like them, could not be so corrupting in its power as the Christians were in the habit of representing it; that if we could succeed in substituting Christianity quietly, without alienating the affections, or shocking too violently the prejudices, of the believers in the prevailing superstitions, our gain would be double. To this mode of arguing I knew she was impelled, by her love and almost reverence for Portia; and how could I blame it, springing from such a cause? I had, almost criminally, allowed her to blind herself in a way she never would have done, had her strong mind acted, as on other subjects, untrammelled and free. I was not sorry that Milo had brought before her mind a fact which, however revolting in its horror to such a nature as hers, could not but heal while it wounded.
'Milo,' said Julia, as I ended, 'say now that you have been jesting; that this is a piece of wit with which you would begin in a suitable way an extraordinary day; this is one of your Gallienus fictions.'