The honour of developing the Emperor’s purpose was reserved for Theocles, who, with admirable presence of mind, had ever since he found he must fight been engaged in trying to select the weakest antagonist.  After hesitating between the unwieldy chief of the Peripatetics and the feminine Leaena he fixed on the latter, partly moved, perhaps, by the hope of avenging his beard.  With a martial cry he sprang towards her, and upraised his weapon for a swashing blow.  But he had sadly miscalculated.  Leaena was hardly less versed in the combats of Mars than in those of Venus, having, in fact, commenced her distinguished career as a camp-follower of the Emperor Gordian.  A tremendous stroke caught him on the hand; his blade dropped to the earth; why did not the fingers follow?  Leaena elucidated the problem by a still more violent blow on his face; torrents of blood gushed forth indeed, but only from the nose.  The sword doubled up; it had neither point nor edge.  Encouraged by this opportune discovery the philosophers attacked each other with infinite spirit and valour.  Infuriated by the blows given and received, by the pokings and proddings of the military, and the hilarious derision of the public, they cast away the shivered blades and resorted to the weapons of Nature.  They kicked, they cuffed, they scratched, they tore the garments from each other’s shoulders, they foamed and rolled gasping in the yellow sand of the arena.  At a signal from the Emperor the portal of the amphitheatre was thrown open, and the whole mass of clawing and cuffing philosophy was bundled ignominiously into the street.

By this time Gallienus was seated on his tribunal, and Plotinus, released from his bonds, was standing by his side.

“O Emperor,” he murmured, deeply abashed, “what can I urge?  Thou wilt surely demolish my city!”

“No, Plotinus,” replied Gallienus, pointing to the Goth and the Christian, “there are the men who will destroy the City of Philosophers.  Would that were all they will destroy!”

THE DEMON POPE

“So you won’t sell me your soul?” said the devil.

“Thank you,” replied the student, “I had rather keep it myself, if it’s all the same to you.”

“But it’s not all the same to me.  I want it very particularly.  Come, I’ll be liberal.  I said twenty years.  You can have thirty.”

The student shook his head.

“Forty!”

Another shake.

“Fifty!”

As before.

“Now,” said the devil, “I know I’m going to do a foolish thing, but I cannot bear to see a clever, spirited young man throw himself away.  I’ll make you another kind of offer.  We won’t have any bargain at present, but I will push you on in the world for the next forty years.  This day forty years I come back and ask you for a boon; not your soul, mind, or anything not perfectly in your power to grant.  If you give it, we are quits; if not, I fly away with you.  What say you to this?”