Valeria

e To A C

a or cuirass, made of plates of bronze, fastened to a flexible body of leather; and cothurni, or a sort of laced boots, leaching to mid-leg. On his back hung his round embossed shield; by his side, in its sheath, his short, straight sword, and on his head was a burnished helmet, with a sweeping horsehair crest. His face was bronzed with the sun of many climes. But when, for a moment, he removed his helmet to cool his brow, one saw that his

, with a brilliant scarlet border of what is still known as "Greek fret;" and over this, fastened by a brooch at his throat, a flowing cloak. On his head sat jauntily a soft felt hat, not unlike those still worn by the Italian peasantry

12th Legion, returning with his Greek secretary, Isidorus, from the town of Alban

his secretary, with an air of affable condescension, "i

inclination of the head, "that your humble secretary has not t

aid the centurion, with a rather con

g man, "and it seems to be a sort of hereditary habit, for my Athe

ons; why, your very name indicates your ad

iest of Phoebus, and named me, like himself, from the sungod, whom he worshipped; but I found the party of Isis fashionable at

reat and virtuous and strong," said the soldier, with an angry gesture. "The more gods

upple Greek. "A most pernicious sect, that

they have increased prodigiously of late. Even in the army and the pal

ition," said the Greek secretary. "Certain it is, they seem to avoid being present at the public sacrifices, as they used to

ion, with an air of languid curiosity. "They see

Ostian gate, beside the pyramid of Cestius, which you may see amongst the cypresses. They have many strange usages. Their funeral customs, especially, differ very widely from the Greek or Roman ones. They bury the body, with many mysterious rites, in vaults or chambers underground, instead of burning it on a funeral pyre. They are rank atheists, refusing to worship the gods, or even to throw so much as a grain of incense on their altar, or place a garland of flowers before their shrines, or even have their images

fe once in Libya;-rushed between me and a lion, which sprang from a thicket as I stopped to let my horse drink at a stream-as it might be the Anio, there. The lion's fangs met in his arm, but he never winced. He may believe what he pleases fo

the soft-smiling Greek. "They are seditious co

, hungry Greekling,"[3] exclaimed the centurion

ecretary, yet with a vindictive glance from his tr

every side rolled the undulating Campagna, now a scene of melancholy desolation, then cultivated like a garden, abounding in villas and mansions whose marble columns gleamed snowy white through the luxuriant foliage of their embosoming myrtle and laurel groves. On either side of the road were the stately tombs of Rome's mighty dead-her pr?tors, proconsuls, and senators some, like the mausoleum of C?cilia Metella,[5] rising like a solid fortress; others were like little wayside altars, but all were surrounded by an elegantly kept green sward, adorned with parterres of flowers. Their ruins now rise like

ladies and the gilded gallants of the city to the elegant villas without the walls -processions of consuls and proconsuls with their guards, and crowds of peasants bringing in the panniers of their patient do

issuing forth

consuls to t

n return, in

s, the ensigns

orts, turms of

from region

abits on the

TNO

enos sebete Theon" "Alexomenos worships his God." Evidently some Roman soldier had scratched this in an idle hour in derision of the worship of our Lord by his Christian fellow-soldier. Tertullian also refers to the same calumny; and Lucian, a pagan w

oncerning the early Christians. Their celebration of the Lord's Supper in the pr

those foreign adventurers who sought to worm their way

rum, as the Ro

, built upon a square base of still larger size. After two