r driving us into the sea. This is
what we must face to-day."

Two or three nodded, half reluctantly, as though they recognized a fact
long known, and held aloof so far as might be. Pomponius glanced from
grave face to grave face. His voice dropped a note lower. Not for
nothing had he been trained to speak in the Forum before men.

"Friends, the fault of the whole matter lieth with us, in Roman hands.
If Romans lose Britain, and if Saxons win it, it will be the fault of
none but Romans."

A murmur went through the room, wordless, speaking more plainly than
words. Pomponius raised his hand.

"Have patience, I pray you, and hear me! What I shall say is, in a
manner, treason against our divinity, our lord Emperor, yet before now
truth hath been found in treason. The crux of the whole matter lieth in
the fact that we, Romans, lords paramount of Britain, have divided
ourselves into two sects--religious, if you will; but when was not
religion used for State purposes, or State purposes for religion? You
cannot divide the two. We are polytheists, worshipping the ancient gods
of our fathers, or we are Augustans, worshipping the divinity of our
lord Emperor. And of the two, which is the true faith hath nothing at
all to do with the matter. The point lieth in the fact that there are
two. Beset as we are by outer dangers, it needs small wit to see that
our sole hope is in unity of thought and purpose. This division, for
ourselves, was bad enough. It was worse when we found pitted against us
two other religions, of two separate peoples here with whom we had to
deal. One, the religion of the ancient Gaels, which we found here, and
which was druidical and wholly abhorrent in our eyes; the other, the
religion of the Goths and Saxons, which, like our own elder faith, was
polytheistic.

"You know that Rome's policy hath ever been to absorb, to make bone of
her bone and flesh of her flesh what she hath taken for her own. And
herein lies her true greatness. But Gaelic or British gods would never
unite with Roman gods; it was an alien creed, with no single point in
common. Gothic gods would so unite,--mark you that,--for Gothic religion
differed from Roman only in the names of its gods and in a coarser fibre
which with us had been refined away. What did we, therefore,--we, that
is the Romans our fathers,--for the furthering of our purposes and for
the glory which was Rome's? We took the Goths unto ourselves and gave
them our religion.