a new terror now hung over them: the no less
inexorable power of Caesar. To the struggle of man against the gods there
was but one possible end: Annihilation. In the conflict of man against
man there might yet be, if not victory, at least escape. The veteran
Memnon, with his one arm, had kept watch on the temple-roof during that
night's orgy, planning measures for repulsing the enemy's attack, till
the storm had burst on him and his adherents with the "artillery of
heaven." Then the greater portion of the garrison had taken refuge in the
lower galleries of the Serapeum, and the old general was left alone at
his post, in the blinding and deafening tempest. He threw his remaining
arm round a statue that graced the parapet of the roof to save himself
from being swept or washed away; and he would still have shouted his
orders, but that the hurricane drowned his voice, and none of his few
remaining adherents could have heard him speak. He, too, had heard the
champing of horses and had seen the moving mountain which Orpheus had
described. It was in fact a Roman engine of war; and, faithful though he
was to the cause he had undertaken, something like a feeling of joy
stirred his warrior's soul, as he looked down on the fine and
well-drilled men who followed the Imperial standards under which he had,
ere now, shed his best blood. His old comrades in arms had not forgotten
how to defy the tempest, and their captains had been well advised in
preparing to attack first what seemed the securest side of the temple.
The struggle, he foresaw, would be against tried soldiers, and it was
with a deep curse and a smile of bitter scorn that he thought of the
inexperienced novices under his command. It was only yesterday that he
had tried to moderate Olympius' sanguine dreams, and had said to him: "It
is not by enthusiasm but by tactics that we defeat a foe!"

The skill and experience he had to contend with were in no respect
inferior to his own; and he would know, only too soon, what the practical
worth might be of the daring and enthusiastic youths whom he had
undertaken to command, and of whom he still had secret hopes for the
best.

The one thing to do was to prevent the Christians from effecting the
breach which they evidently intended to make in the back-wall, before the
Libyan army of relief should arrive; and, at the same time, to defend the
front of the temple from the roof. There was a use for every one who
could heave a stone or