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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vergilius, by Irving Bacheller This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Vergilius A Tale of the Coming of Christ Author: Irving Bacheller Release Date: August 8, 2005 [EBook #16491] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VERGILIUS *** Produced by Al Haines Vergilius A Tale of the Coming of Christ By Irving Bacheller Author of "Eben Holden" "D'ri and I" "Darrel of the Blessed Isles" New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers 1904 Copyright, 1904, by IRVING BACHELLER. All rights reserved. Published August, 1904. Vergilius A Tale of the Coming of Christ CHAPTER 1 Rome had passed the summits and stood looking into the dark valley of fourteen hundred years. Behind her the graves of Caesar and Sallust and Cicero and Catullus and Vergil and Horace; before her centuries of madness and treading down; round about her a multitude sickening of luxury, their houses filled with spoil, their mouths with folly, their souls with discontent; above her only mystery and silence; in her train, philosophers questioning if it were not better for a man had he never been born--deeming life a misfortune and extinction the only happiness; poets singing no more of "pleasantries and trifles," but seeking favor with poor obscenities. Soon they were even to celebrate the virtue of harlots, the integrity of thieves, the tenderness of murderers, the justice of oppression. Leading the caravan were types abhorrent and self-opposed--effeminate men, masculine women, cheerful cynics, infidel priests, wealthy people with no credit, patricians, honoring and yet despising the gods, hating and yet living on the populace. Here was the spectacle of a republican empire, and an emperor gathering power while he affected to disdain it. The splendor of the capital had attracted from all nations the idle rich, gamblers, speculators, voluptuaries, profligates, intriguers, criminals. To such an extreme had luxury been carried that nothing was too sacred, nothing too costly to be enjoyed. Digestion had become a science, courtship an art,
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