shrinking. Let your proclamations
this moment be sounded abroad calling upon the Christians to appear for
judgment upon their faith before the tribunals of Rome, and they will
come flocking up as do your Pagan multitudes to the games of the
Flavian.'

While we had been speaking, Fronto sat, inattentive as it seemed to what
was going on. But at these last words he was compelled to give ear, and
did it as a man does who has heard unwelcome truths. As Felix ended, the
Emperor turned toward him without speaking, and without any look of
doubt or passion, waiting for such explanation as he might have to give.

Fronto, instantly re-assuring himself, rose from his seat with the air
of a man who doubts not the soundness of his cause, and feels sure of
the ear of his judge.

'I will not say, great Emperor, that I have not in my ardor made broader
the statements which I have received from others. It is an error quite
possible to have been guilty of. My zeal for the gods is warm and
oft-times outruns the calm dictates of reason. But if what has now been
affirmed as true, be true, it is more I believe than they who so report
can make good--or than others can, be they friends or enemies of this
tribe. Who shall now go out into this wilderness of streets, into the
midst of this countless multitude of citizens and strangers--men of all
religions and all manners--and pick me out the seventy thousand
Christians, and show that all are close at home? Out of the seventy
thousand, is it not palpable that its third or half may have fled, and
yet it shall be in no man's power to make it so appear--to point to the
spot whence they have departed, or to that whither they have gone? But
beside this, I must here and now confess, that it was upon no knowledge
of my own gathered by my own eyes and ears that I based the truth, now
charged as error; but upon what came to me through those in whose word I
have ever placed the most sacred trust, the priests of the temple, and,
more than all, my faithful servant--friend I may call him--Curio, into
whom drops by some miracle all that is strange or new in Rome.'

I said in reply, 'that it were not so difficult perhaps as the priest
has made it seem, to learn what part of the Christians were now in Rome,
and what part were gone. There are among us, Aurelian, in every separate
church, men who discharge duties corresponding to those which Fronto
performs in the Temple of the Sun. We have our priests, and ot