Symmachus was addressing a Christian emperor; and it was an ill thing then, as in the days of Hadrian, to argue with the master of the legions.  Still, the method he chooses is interesting:  it holds a light up to the inwardness of the age, and shows it dead.  This was at twenty-one years after the death of the Dragon-Apostate; whose appeal had all been to the realities and the divinity of man and the living splendor of the Gods he knew and loved.  That splendor, said he, should burn away the detritus, and make Romans men and free again.  But Symmachus, for all his admirable restraint, his rhetorical excellence, his good manners and gentlemanly bearing,—­which I am sure we should admire,—­ appeals really only to the detritus; to nothing in the world that could possibly help or save Rome.  The Christians wanted to be free of it, because they felt its weight; the Pagans wanted to keep it, because they found it warm and comfortable.  Symmachus sees nothing higher or better than custom; the secret of the universe, says he, is unknowable; there is no inner life.  —­He was confuted by a much more alive and less estimable man:  Ambrose, bishop of Milan,—­with whom, also, both he and Ausonius were on friendly terms.  Ambrose’s argument, too, is illuminating:  like the King of Hearts’, it was in the main that “you were not to talk nonsense.”  How ridiculous, said he, to impute the victories of old Rome to the Religion of Numa and favor of the Gods,—­when the strength and valor of the Roman soldier were quite enough to account for all.  Thus he appears in the strange role of a rationalist.  Christianity, he continued, was the one and only true religion; and all the rest—­etc., etc., etc.  Ambrose and his party were fighting towards a definite and positive end; knew what they wanted, and meant to get it.  Of course they won.  Symmachus and the senate were fighting only for a sentiment about the past, and had no chance at all.  And it really did not matter:  Rome was doomed anyway.

But in passing I must e’en linger on a note of sublimity in this petition of Symmachus:  of sublime faith;—­when he makes Dea Roma refer to her history as having “hitherto flowed in an uninterrupted course of piety.”  It makes one think that they taught Roman history in their schools then much in the same way that we teach our national histories in our schools today; here and in England, and no doubt elsewhere, "An uninterrupted course of piety!" quotha.  Marry come up!

But all this is anticipating the years a little:  looking into the eighties, whereas we have not finished with the sixties yet.  Julian died in 363, on the 26th of June; and within a couple of years, you may say,—­many said so then,—­the Gods began to avenge him.  Nature herself took a hand, to warn a degenerate world.  In 365 came an earthquake; gollowed by a huge withdrawal of the sea, so that you could explore dry-shod the antres of the sea-gods.  And then a tidal wave which