of his subject, and did not attend to the Greek. “The wild-beasts hunts,” he continued, “ah, those hunts during the games, Aristo! they were a spectacle for the gods. Twenty-two elephants, ten panthers, ten hyænas (by-the-bye, a new beast, not strange, however, to you here, I suppose), ten camelopards, a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros—I can’t go through the list. Fancy the circus planted throughout for the occasion, and turned into a park, and then another set of wild animals, Getes and Sarmatians, Celts and Goths, sent in against them, to hunt down, capture and kill them, or to be killed themselves.”
“Ah, the Goths!” answered Aristo; “those fellows give you trouble, though, now and then. Perhaps they will give you more. There is a report in the prætorium to-day that they have crossed the Danube.”
“Yes, they will give us trouble,” said Cornelius, drily; “they have given us trouble, and they will give us more. The Samnites gave us trouble, and our friends of Carthage here, and Jugurtha, and Mithridates; trouble, yes, that is the long and the short of it; they will give us trouble. Is trouble a new thing to Rome?” he asked, stretching out his arm, as if he were making a speech after dinner, and giving a toast.
“The Goths give trouble, and take a bribe,” retorted Aristo; “this is what trouble means in their case: it’s a troublesome fellow who hammers at our door till we pay his reckoning. It is troublesome to raise the means to buy them off. And the example of these troublesome savages is catching; it was lately rumoured that the Carpians had been asking the same terms for keeping quiet.”
“It would ill become the majesty of Rome to soil her fingers with the blood of such vermin,” said Cornelius; “she ignores them.”
“And therefore she most majestically bleeds us instead,” answered Aristo, “that she may have treasure to give them. We are not so troublesome as they; the more’s the pity. No offence to you, however, or to the emperor, or to great Rome, Cornelius. We are over our cups; it’s only a game of politics, you know, like chess or the cottabus. Maro bids you ‘parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos;’ but you have changed your manners. You coax the Goths and bully the poor African.”
“Africa can show fight, too,” interposed Jucundus, who had been calmly listening and enjoying his own wine; “witness Thysdrus. That was giving every rapacious Quæstor a lesson that he may go too far, and find a dagger when he demands a purse.”
He was alluding to the revolt of Africa, which led to the downfall of the tyrant Maximin and the exaltation of the Gordians, when the native landlords armed their peasantry, killed the imperial officer, and raised the standard of rebellion in the neighbouring town from impatience of exactions under which they suffered.
“No offence, I say, Cornelius, no offence to eternal Rome,” said Aristo, “but you have explained to us why you weigh so heavy on us. I’ve always heard it was a fortune at Rome for a man to have found out a new tax. Vespasian did his best; but now you tax our smoke, and our very shadow; and Pescennius threatened to tax the air we breathe. We’ll play at riddles, and you shall solve the following:—Say who is she that eats her own limbs, and grows eternal upon them? Ah, the Goths will take the measure of her eternity!”
“The Goths!” said Jucundus, who was warming into conversational life, “the Goths! no fear of the Goths; but,” and he nodded significantly, “look at home; we have more to fear indoors than abroad.”
“He means the prætorians,” said Cornelius to Aristo, condescendingly; “I grant you that there have been several untoward affairs; we have had our problem, but it’s a thing of the past, it never can come again. I venture to say that the power of the prætorians is at an end. That murder of the two emperors the other day was the worst job they ever did; it has turned the public opinion of the whole world against them. I have no fear of the prætorians.”
“I don’t mean prætorians more than Goths,” said Jucundus; “no, give me the old weapons, the old maxims of Rome, and I defy the scythe of Saturn. Do the soldiers march under the old ensign? do they swear by the old gods? do they interchange the good old signals and watchwords? do they worship the fortune of Rome; then I say we are safe. But do we take to new ways? do we trifle with religion? do we make light of Jupiter, Mars, Romulus, the augurs, and the ancilia? then I say, not all our shows and games, our elephants, hyænas, and hippopotamuses, will do us any good. It was not the best thing, no, not the best thing that the soldiers did, when they invested that Philip with the purple. But he is dead and gone.” And he sat up and leant on his elbow.
“Ah! but it will be all set right now,” said Cornelius, “you’ll see.”
“He’d be a reformer, that Philip,” continued Jucundus, “and put down an enormity. Well, they call it an enormity; let it be an enormity. He’d put it down; but why? there’s the point; why? It’s no secret at all,” and his voice grew angry, “that that hoary-headed Atheist Fabian was at the bottom of it; Fabian, the Christian. I hate reforms.”
“Well, we had long wished to do it,” answered Cornelius, “but could not manage it. Alexander attempted it near twenty years ago. It’s what philosophers have always aimed at.”
“The gods consume philosophers and the Christians together!” said Jucundus devoutly. “There’s little to choose between them, except that the Christians are the filthier animal of the two. But both are ruining the most glorious political structure that the world ever saw. I am not over-fond of Alexander either.”
“Thank you in the name of philosophy,” said the Greek.
“And thank you in the name of the Christians,” chimed in Juba.
“That’s good!” cried Jucundus; “the first word that hopeful youth has spoken since he came in, and he takes on him to call himself a Christian.”
“I’ve a right to do so, if I choose,” said Juba; “I’ve a right to be a Christian.”
“Right! O yes, right! ha, ha!” answered Jucundus, “right! Jove help the lad! by all manner of means. Of course, you have a right to go in malam rem in whatever way you please.”
“I am my own master,” said Juba; “my father was a Christian. I suppose it depends on myself to follow him or not, according to my fancy, and as long as I think fit.”
“Fancy! think fit!” answered Jucundus, “you pompous little mule! Yes, go and be a Christian, my dear child, as your doting father went. Go, like him, to the priest of their mysteries; be spit on, stripped, dipped; feed on little boys’ marrow and brains; worship the ass; and learn all the foul magic of the sect. And then be delated and taken up, and torn to shreds on the rack, or thrown to the lions and so go to Tartarus, if Tartarus there be, in the way you think fit. You’ll harm none but yourself, my boy. I don’t fear such as you, but the deeper heads.”
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
