tly sitting in
his house, which was so splendidly furnished as to seem fitted for some
princely Greek rather than for a Hebrew. This was especially the case
with the men's living-room, in which Apollodorus sat, for the pictures
on the walls and pavement of this beautiful hall--of which the
roof, which was half open, was supported on columns of the finest
porphyry--represented the loves of Eros and Psyche; while between the
pillars stood busts of the greatest heathen philosophers, and in the
background a fine statue of Plato was conspicuous. Among all the Greeks
and Romans there was the portrait of only one Jew, and this was that of
Philo, whose intellectual and delicate features greatly resembled those
of the most illustrious of his Greek companions.

In this splendid room, lighted by silver lamps, there was no lack
of easy couches, and on one of these Apollodorus was reclining; a
fine-looking man of fifty, with his mild but shrewd eyes fixed on a tall
and aged fellow-Israelite who was pacing up and down in front of him and
talking eagerly; the old man's hands too were never still, now he used
them in eager gesture, and again stroked his long white beard. On an
easy seat opposite to the master of the house sat a lean young man with
pale and very regular finely-cut features, black hair and a black beard;
he sat with his dark glowing eyes fixed on the ground, tracing lines and
circles on the pavement with the stick he held in his hand, while the
excited old man, his uncle, urgently addressed Apollodorus in a vehement
but fluent torrent of words. Apollodorus, however, shook his head
from time to time at his speech and frequently met him with a brief
contradiction.

It was easy to see that what he was listening to touched him painfully,
and that the two diametrically different men were fighting a battle
which could never lead to any satisfactory issue. For, though they both
used the Greek tongue and confessed the same religion, all they felt and
thought was grounded on views, as widely dissimilar as though the two
men had been born in different spheres. When two opponents of such
different calibre meet, there is a great clatter of arms but no bloody
wounds are dealt and neither rout nor victory can result.

It was on account of this old man and his nephew that Apollodorus had
forborne to-day to decorate his house, for the Rabbi Gamaliel, who had
arrived only the day before from Palestine, and had been welcomed by
his Ale