people were debased and looked on in silence at the perpetration of enormous crimes. After Nero's dealings with his mother, he could still be emperor. The name of religion was applied to a system corrupt to the inmost centre. No one believed in it who had any pretence to intelligence. Public honor and justice were almost unknown; and conquered provinces were only regarded as victims of oppression. Private virtues had almost vanished; and honor and truth and mercy were little more than empty sounds. Decency itself had departed; and vices which cannot be named in our day were freely practised, unchecked by public opinion. It was a society where vice had penetrated to the heart of almost every household. That was the most familiar thought which was the most impure. Honor had fled from men, chastity from women, innocence from children.

And what contrasts appeared in that society to their eyes! They saw one emperor cutting away a mountain to build an imperial palace; and another summoning a council of state to decide about the cooking of a fish.

They saw the

name and fame and glory of the old republican heroes all forgotten by their degenerate descendants, who now prided themselves in nothing so much as their skill in detecting at a single taste the native bed of an oyster or sea-urchin. Effeminate nobles wore light or heavy finger-rings to accord with the varying temperature of the summer and winter seasons, and yet could order a score of slaves to be crucified as an after-dinner pastime. This was the time when bloodthirsty myriads were watching the death-agonies of gladiators whose vengeful kindred were raging all along the borders of the empire; when Roman soldiers abroad were beating back the Dacians, or marching against the Druids, in the isle of Mona, while Boadicea led on the tribes to the vengeance of Camulodune; and when Roman citizens at home were scrambling for their daily dole of victuals at the doors of the great; when he was most fortunate who was most vicious; and they obtained wealth and honor, who by

forging wills, had defrauded the widow and the orphan; when a fierce populace, fresh from the amphitheatre, and a nobility polluted by vices without a name, and an emperor stained with the guilt of a mother's murder; gazing mockingly upon the death-agonies of martyrs who died in flames, clothed in the tunica molesta; when for year after year, and generation after generation, all these evils grew worse, till, in the fearful words of Tacitus, "They would have lost memory also with their voice, if it had been possible as well to forget as to keep silent."

It may be urged, however, that there was much virtue in spite of all this vice. True, there was virtue, and that too of a high order. There are names which glow with a lustre all the brighter for the darkness that is around them. They irradiate the gloom of Tacitus' histories; and make us exult in seeing how hard it is for corruption to extinguish the manly or the noble sentiment. Pætus Thrasea, Aurulenus Rusticus, Helvidius Priscus would adorn any age. Lucan alone might have ennobled this. Seneca's life may have been doubtful; but who can remain unmoved at the spectacle of his death? Afterward Tacitus and Pliny sustained their virtuous friendship, and found others like themselves, kindred spirits, who made life not endurable but delightful. In that age and in the subsequent one there were good and high-hearted men; for did not the "good emperors" succeed the "bad emperors"? Trajan would have adorned the noblest age of the world. Marcus Aurelius stands among the first of those who have ruled. In addition to these great characters of history, there were no doubt many men, of an obscure order, who passed through life in an obscure way, and yet were honest and high-minded citizens. There were, no doubt, many like Juvenal's Umbricius, who deplored the vice around them, and believed with him that Rome was no place for honest men; but tried to be honest in their way. There must have been many of these, of whom Umbricius is only a type; too plain-spoken to succeed in a generation

of flatterers, and too high-minded to stoop to that baseness by which alone advancement could be obtained.

Moreover Rome was not the world. Beside the capital, there was the country. There, as Umbricius says, might be found simplicity, virtue, and honesty. Among the simple, the high-minded, and the frugal rustics, the vice of the city was unknown. In the rural districts, without doubt, the great masses of men continued as they had ever been, neither better nor worse.

Let us allow all this, that there was this exceptional morality in the city and this rural simplicity in the country. What remains?

Simply this: that after all, Rome was the head, the heart, and the brain of the world. It guided. It led the way. What availed all else when this was incurably disorganized? Its virtuous characters found themselves in a hopeless minority. They could do nothing against the downward pressure all around them. They struggled, they died; and other generations arose in which the state of things was worse. The whole head was sick, the whole heart faint. The life of the state, as it centred round its heart, drew corruption from it which passed through every fibre. Society was going to decay, and one thing alone could save the world.

That remedy was now brought by the man whom we have described.

But now our party have passed under the dripping archway of the Porta Capena; and the centurion conveys to his destined abode the Jew who had appealed unto Cæsar.

II.

THE YOUNG ATHENIAN.

PON the slopes of the Apennines, in the vicinity of Tibur, stood the villa of Lucius Sulpicius Labeo. From the front there was an extensive prospect which commanded the wide Campania, and the distant capital. The villa was of modest proportions, in comparison with many others near it, yet of most elegant style. The front was decorated with a broad portico, before which was a terrace covered with flowers and shrubbery; the walks were bordered with boxwood, which in places was cut into the forms of animals and vases. The public road was about a quarter of a mile away; and a broad avenue of plane-trees connected it with the house, winding in such a way as to afford a gentle descent, and where it joined the road there was a neat porter's house. Behind the villa were out-houses and barns; on the right was an extensive kitchen-garden; on the left an orchard and vineyard surrounding the steward's house.

Other villas dotted the slopes of the mountains far and near. The most conspicuous among these was the one immediately adjoining, a most magnificent establishment, which far exceeded that of Labeo in extent and splendor. This was the villa of Pedanius Secundus, at this time prefect of the city. From the terrace of Labeo the greater part of this estate could be seen; but the eye rested most upon a sickening spectacle at the gates of Secundus, where two wretched slaves hung upon the cross, whose faint moans showed that life was not yet extinct.

It was early dawn, and the sun had not yet risen, but in the neighboring villa the sound of voices showed that the slaves were out for the day's labor. The villa of Labeo, on the contrary, was all silent, and no one was visible except one figure on the portico.

This was the mistress of the house, a lady of exquisite beauty, who was yet in the bloom of her youth. Her manner indicated extreme agitation and impatience. She would pace the terrace in a restless way for a time, and then, hastening down the steps to the terrace, she would look eagerly along the public road as though awaiting some one.

The sound of horse's feet

At length her suspense ended. came from afar, and soon a single rider came galloping rapidly along. He turned in to the gate-way, ran up the avenue, and in a few minutes more had reached the house. The lady had hurried down as soon as she saw him, and stood waiting for him, and encountered him in the avenue. The rider leaped from his horse and carelessly let him go. The lady seized both his hands in a strong, nervous grasp; and, in a voice which expressed the deepest agitation, she asked, hurriedly,

"Well, what news?"

She spoke in Greek. For a moment the other did not reply, but looked at her with a troubled face, which he vainly tried to render calm.

There was a strong likeness between the two as they stood thus, looking at one another, the likeness of brother and sister. In both there were the same refined and intellectual features of the purest Greek type, the same spiritual eye and serene forehead. But in the woman it was softened by her feminine nature; in the man it had been expanded into the strongest assertion of intellectual force.

"My sweet sister," he said, at last, speaking also in Greek, with a purity of accent that could only have been acquired by a breeding under the shadow of the Athenian Acropolis, "My sweet sister, there is no reason for such