“My hero shall be the logos of Heraclitus with the superadded authority of the Hebrew high priest.  You may recall the fact that I greatly admire the Essenes and their system.  My deity is a pure essence; not Jehovah the protector or avenger.  The logos, or mediator, I have borrowed from the writings of the Greek philosophers.  This logos returns to the bosom of God after the sacrifice.  Greek philosophy combined with Hebraic moral principles!  Ah! it is grand synthesis; Seneca with his conception of a perfected humanity, Lucretius, Manlius—­who called, rightfully too, Epicurus a god—­and Heraclitus with the first idea of a logos:  all these ancient ideas I have worked into my romantic play, including the old cult of the Trinities; the Buddhistic:  Buddha, Dharma, and Saingha; the Chinese:  Heaven, Earth, and Emperor; the Babylonian:  Ea, the father, Marduk, the son, and the Fire God, Gibil, who is also the Paraclete.  So my philosophy is merely a continuation and modification of that taught by Heraclitus and Plato, but with a Jewish background—­for mine is the only moral nation.  The wisdom of the Rabbis, their Monotheism and ethics, are all there.”  His eyes were ablaze.

“You are very erudite, Philo Judaeus!” exclaimed his listener; “but, tell me, is there no actual foundation for your Jewish god?” Hyzlo eagerly awaited a reply, though he could not account for this curiosity.

“Yes,” answered Philo, lightly, “there is, I freely acknowledge, a slight foundation.  Some years ago in Jerusalem they arrested a poverty-stricken fanatic, the son of a Jewess.  His father was said to have been an indigent and aged carpenter.  This Joshua, or Ieshua, was driven out of Jerusalem, and he took refuge among a lot of poor fishermen on Lake Gennesareth.  There he joined a sect called the Baptists, because their founder, a socialist named Ioakanaan, poured water on the heads of the converted.  Ieshua never married and was suspected of idolatrous practices, which he had absorbed from hermits of the Egyptian Thebaid.  Josephus, a wise friend and companion of my youth, wrote me these details.  He said that Ieshua disappeared after his mad attempt to take Jerusalem by storm, riding—­as is depicted the Bona Dea—­on the back of a humble animal.  Yet, if you wish to appeal to the common folk, make your hero a deposed king or divinity, who walks familiarly among the poor, as walked the gods at the dawn of time with the daughters of men.  I depict my protagonist as a half-cracked Jew.  I call him Iesus Christos—­after Krishna; and this poor man’s god proposes to redeem the world, to place the lowly in the seats of the mighty—­he is an Anarchos, as they would say in Athens.  He promises the Kingdom of God to those who follow him; but only a few do.  He is the friend of outcasts, prostitutes, criminals.  And though he does not triumph on earth, nevertheless he is the spiritual ruler of earth; he is the Son of the Trinity which