utorize him some day. He's a sharp lad, isn't he,
Firmian?" turning to the boy; "a great hand at composition for his years;
better than I am, who never shall write Latin decently. Yet what can I do?
I must profess and teach, for Rome is the only place for the law, and
these city professorships are not to be despised."

"Whom are you attending here?" asked Jucundus, drily.

"You are the only man in Sicca who needs to ask the question. What! not
know the great Polemo of Rhodes, the friend of Plotinus, the pupil of
Theagenes, the disciple of Thrasyllus, the hearer of Nicomachus, who was
of the school of Secundus, the doctor of the new Pythagoreans? Not feel
the presence in Sicca of Polemo, the most celebrated, the most intolerable
of men? That, however, is not his title, but the 'godlike,' or the
'oracular,' or the 'portentous,' or something else as impressive. Every
one goes to him. He is the rage. I should not have a chance of success if
I could not say that I had attended his lectures; though I'd be bound our
little Firmian here would deliver as good. He's the very cariophyllus of
human nature. He comes to the schools in a litter of cedar, ornamented
with silver and covered with a lion's skin, slaves carrying him, and a
crowd of friends attending, with the state of a proconsul. He is dressed
in the most exact style; his pallium is of the finest wool, white, picked
out with purple; his tresses flow with unguent, his fingers glitter with
rings, and he smells like Idalium. As soon as he puts foot on earth, a
great hubbub of congratulation and homage breaks forth. He takes no
notice; his favourite pupils form a circle round him, and conduct him into
one of the _exedrae_, till the dial shows the time for lecture. Here he
sits in silence, looking at nothing, or at the wall opposite him, talking
to himself, a hum of admiration filling the room. Presently one of his
pupils, as if he were praeco to the duumvir, cries out, 'Hush, gentlemen,
hush! the godlike'--no, it is not that. I've not got it. What _is_ his
title? 'the Bottomless,' that's it--'the Bottomless speaks.' A dead silence
ensues; a clear voice and a measured elocution are the sure token that it
is the outpouring of the oracle. 'Pray,' says the little man, 'pray, which
existed first, the egg or the chick? Did the chick lay the egg, or the egg
hatch the chick?' Then there ensues a whispering, a disputing, and after a
while a dead silence. At the end of a quarter of an h