eplied Isidorus, with an obsequious
inclination of the head, "that your humble secretary has not the same
means of learning affairs of state as his noble master."

"Oh, you Greeks learn everything!" said the centurion, with a rather
contemptuous laugh. "Trust you for that."

"We try to make ourselves useful to our patrons," replied the young man,
"and it seems to be a sort of hereditary habit, for my Athenian
ancestors were proverbial for seeking to know some new thing."

"Yes, new manners, new customs, new religions; why, your very name
indicates your adherence to the new-fangled worship of Isis."

"I hold not altogether that way," replied the youth. "I belong rather to
the eclectic school. My father, Apollodorus, was a priest of Phoebus,
and named me, like himself, from the sungod, whom he worshipped; but I
found the party of Isis fashionable at court, so I even changed my name
and colours to the winning side. When one is at Rome, you know, he must
do as the Romans do."

"Yes, like the degenerate Romans, who forsake the old gods, under whom
the State was great and virtuous and strong," said the soldier, with an
angry gesture. "The more gods, the worse the world becomes. But this new
edict will make short work of some of them."

"With the Christians you mean," said the supple Greek. "A most
pernicious sect, that deserve extermination with fire and sword."

"I know little about them," replied Sertorius, with a sneer, "save that
they have increased prodigiously of late. Even in the army and the
palace are those known to favour their obscene and contemptible
doctrines."

"'Tis whispered that even their sacred highnesses the Empresses Prisca
and Valeria are infected with their grovelling superstition," said the
Greek secretary. "Certain it is, they seem to avoid being present at the
public sacrifices, as they used to be. But the evil sect has its
followers chiefly among the slaves and vile plebs of the poorest
Transtiberine region of Rome."

"What do they worship, anyhow?" asked the centurion, with an air of
languid curiosity. "They seem to have no temples, nor altars, nor
sacrifices."

"They have dark and secret and abominable rites," replied the fawning
Greek, eager to gratify the curiosity of his patron with popular
slanders against the Christians. "'Tis said they worship a low-born
peasant, who was crucified for sedition. Some say he had an ass's
head,[1] but that, I doubt not, is a vulgar superstition; and