But was not Apollo, perhaps, like the rest of the immortals, an idol of the fancy, living only in the imagination of men who had devised it?  Stern thinkers and pious folks, like the skeptics and the Christians, laughed the whole tribe of the Olympians to scorn.  Still, the hand of Phoebus Apollo had rested heavily on his shoulders in his dream.  His power, after all, might be great.  The god must have the promised sacrifice, come what might.  Bitter wrath rose up in his soul at this thought, as it had often done before, with the immortals, against whom he, the all-powerful, was impotent.  If only for an hour they could be his subjects, he would make them rue the sufferings by which they spoiled his existence.

“He is called Martialis.  I will remember that name,” he thought, as he cast a last envious look at the centurion.

How long Philostratus was gone!  Solitude weighed on him, and he looked about him wildly, as though seeking some support.  An attendant at this moment announced the philosopher, and Caracalla, much relieved, went into the tablinum to meet him.  There he sat down on a seat in front of the writing-table strewn with tablets and papyrus-rolls, rearranged the end of the purple toga for which he had exchanged his bathing-robe, rested one foot on the lion’s neck and his head on his hand.  He would receive this wonderful girl in the character of an anxious sovereign meditating on the welfare of his people.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Galenus—­What I like is bad for me, what I loathe is wholesome

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