n. Of Marcian's ascetic gloom he knew nothing:
not all the misery he had undergone in these last six months could so
warp his wholesome instincts. Owning himself, in the phrases he had
repeated from childhood, a miserable sinner, a vile clot of animated
dust, at heart he felt himself one with all the beautiful and joyous
things that the sun illumined. With pleasure and sympathy he looked
upon an ancient statue of god or hero; only a sense of duty turned his
eyes upon the images of Christian art.

And this natural tendency was encouraged by his education, which, like
that of all well-born Romans, even in the sixth century after Christ,
had savoured much more of paganism than of Christianity. Like his
ancestors, before the age of Constantine, he had been taught grammar
and rhetoric; grammar which was supposed to include all sciences,
meaning practically a comment on a few classical texts, and rhetoric
presumed a preparation for the life of the Forum, having become an art
of declamation which had no reference to realities. Attempts had been
made--the last, only a few years ago, by Cassiodorus--to establish
Christian schools in Rome, but without success, so profoundly were the
ancient intellectual habits rooted in this degenerate people. The long
resistance to the new religion was at an end, but Romans, even while
confessing that the gods were demons, could not cast off their
affection for the mythology and history of their glorious time. Thus
Basil had spent his schooldays mostly in the practice of sophistic
argument, and the delivery of harangues on traditional subjects. Other
youths had shown greater aptitude for this kind of eloquence; he did
not often carry off a prize; but among his proud recollections was a
success he had achieved in the form of a rebuke to an impious
voluptuary who set up a statue of Diana in the room which beheld his
debauches. Here was the nemesis of a system of education which had
aimed solely at the practical, the useful; having always laboured to
produce the man perfectly equipped for public affairs, and nothing else
whatever. Rome found herself tottering with senile steps in the same
path when the Empire and the ancient world lay in ruins about her.
Basil was not studious. Long ago he had forgotten his 'grammatical'
learning--except, of course, a few important matters known to all
educated men, such as the fact that the alphabet was invented by
Mercury, who designed the letters from figures ma