A ROMAN QUEST

"If one might only have a guide to the truth."--_Seneca_.


On Scopus, the high mountain north of Jerusalem, the Roman camp was
pitched, that last autumn in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. A
few years further on, if the warriors of the Emperor Tiberius could
then have foreseen the future, Titus was to quarter his famous
legions on that vantage point; and from its elevation he was to
hurl himself as a resistless battering ram against the Holy City.
But, on this autumn day, when these chronicles begin, no blare of
trumpets was summoning the Roman soldiery to arms; only the feet of
the camp sentinels, as they walked their appointed rounds, broke
the quiet of the sunlit afternoon.

That lithesome, cultivated, serious-minded young knight, Quintus
Cornelius Benignus, is standing on the height which overlooks the
great metropolis. He is the son of Marcus Cornelius Magnus, that
Roman noble who is the intimate associate of the reigning Caesar,
and who has been a luxurious resident on the Palatine Hill since
his distinguished proconsulship in Africa.

* * * * *

NOTE.--It is not from any time-marked Hebrew roll that this story
of Quintus is now taken. He was of Roman blood, and his record is,
rather, to be found in the Latin literature of his time. Well it
is when some new leaf is discovered among the musty folios,
reciting the saintly character and the triumphs of those who lived