--forgive me--nobody in Antioch had
believed for many a year. If he had made his entrance with ten thousand
gladiators, and our white elephant, built a theatre of ivory and glass
in Daphne, and proclaimed games in honour of the Sun, or of any other
member of the Pantheon--'

'He would have acted unworthily of a philosopher.'

'But instead of that one priest draggling up, poor devil, through the
wet grass to the deserted altar with his solitary goose under his arm,
he would have had every goose in Antioch--forgive my stealing a pun
from Aristophanes--running open-mouthed to worship any god known or
unknown--and to see the sights.'

'Well,' said Hypatia, yielding perforce to Orestes's cutting arguments.
'Let us then restore the ancient glories of the Greek drama. Let us give
them a trilogy of Aeschylus or Sophocles.'

'Too calm, my dear madam. The Eumenides might do certainly, or
Philoctetes, if we could but put Philoctetes to real pain, and make the
spectators sure that he was yelling in good earnest.'

'Disgusting!'

'But necessary, like many disgusting things.'

'Why not try the Prometheus?'

'A magnificent field for stage effect, certainly. What with those ocean
nymphs in their winged chariot, and Ocean on his griffin.... But I
should hardly think it safe to reintroduce Zeus and Hermes to the people
under the somewhat ugly light in which Aeschylus exhibits them.'

'I forgot that,' said Hypatia. 'The Orestean trilogy will be best, after
all.'

'Best? perfect--divine! Ah, that it were to be my fate to go down
to posterity as the happy man who once more revived Aeschylus's
masterpieces on a Grecian stage! But--Is there not, begging the pardon
of the great tragedian, too much reserve in the Agamemnon for our modern
taste? If we could have the bath scene represented on the stage, and an
Agamemnon who could be really killed--though I would not insist on that,
because a good actor might make it a reason for refusing the part--but
still the murder ought to take place in public.'

'Shocking! an outrage on all the laws of the drama. Does not even the
Roman Horace lay down as a rule the--_Nec pueros coram populo Medea
trucidet_?'

'Fairest and wisest, I am as willing a pupil of the dear old Epicurean
as any man living--even to the furnishing of my chamber; of which fact
the Empress of Africa may some day assure herself. But we are not now
discussing the art of poetry, but the art of reigning; and, after all,
whil