“Apion, the dealer, was saying something to that effect the other day, and I dare say it is true.  But I can not be persuaded against the evidence of my own eyes, and they light on many good and pleasant things.  If only you had been with us to the Nekropolis yesterday!  Every man was honoring the gods after his own manner.  Some, indeed, were grave enough; still, cheerfulness won the day among the people.  Most of them were full of the god.  I myself, who generally live so quietly, was infected as the mystics came back from Eleusis, and we joined their ranks.”

“’Till the spy Zminis spoiled your happiness and imperiled your brother’s life for a careless speech.”

“Very true!”

“And what your brother heedlessly proclaimed,” Andreas went on, with flashing eyes, “the very sparrows twitter on the house-tops.  It is the truth.  The sovereign of the Roman Empire is a thousand times a murderer.  Some he sent to precede his own brother, and they were followed by all—­ twenty thousand, it is said—­who were attached to the hapless Geta, or who even spoke his name.  This is the lord and master to whom we owe obedience whom God has set over us for our sins.  And when this wretch in the purple shall close his eyes, he, like the rest of the criminals who have preceded him on the throne, will be proclaimed a god!  A noble company!  When your beloved mother died I heard you, even you, revile the gods for their cruelty; others call them kind.  It is only a question of how they accept the blood of the sacrificed beasts, their own creatures, which you shed in their honor.  If Serapis does not grant some fool the thing he asks, then he turns to the altar of Isis, of Anubis, of Zeus, of Demeter.  At last he cries to Sabazios, or one of the new deities of Olympus, who owe their existence to the decisions of the Roman Senate, and who are for the most part scoundrels and villains.  There certainly never were more gods than there are now; and among those of whom the myths tell us things strange enough to bring those who worship them into contempt, or to the gallows, is the countless swarm of good and evil daimons.  Away with your Olympians!  They ought to reward virtue and punish vice; and they are no better than corruptible judges; for you know beforehand just what and how much will avail to purchase their favors.”

“You paint with dark colors,” the girl broke in.  “I have learned from Philip that the Pythagoreans teach that not the sacrifice, but the spirit of the offering, is what really matters.”

“Quite right.  He was thinking, no doubt, of the miracle-monger of Tyana, Apollonius, who certainly had heard of the doctrine of the Redeemer.  But among the thousand nine hundred and ninety, who here bring beasts to the altar, who ever remembers this?  Quite lately I heard one of our garden laborers ask how much a day he ought to sacrifice to the sun, his god.  I told him a keration—­for that is what the poor creature earns for a whole day’s work.  He thought that too much, for he must live; so the god must be content with a tithe, for the taxes to the State on his earnings were hardly more.”