Rome--that some drops of the great cup would fall to the ground--if
he did not make that concession, if he did but remain just there.

NOTES

21. +Transliteration: monochronos hedone. Pater's definition "the
pleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now." The definition is
fitting; the unusual adjective monochronos means, literally, "single
or unitary time."



CHAPTER XVII: BEATA URBS


"Many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which ye
see."

[29] THE enemy on the Danube was, indeed, but the vanguard of the
mighty invading hosts of the fifth century. Illusively repressed
just now, those confused movements along the northern boundary of the
Empire were destined to unite triumphantly at last, in the barbarism,
which, powerless to destroy the Christian church, was yet to suppress
for a time the achieved culture of the pagan world. The kingdom of
Christ was to grow up in a somewhat false alienation from the light
and beauty of the kingdom of nature, of the natural man, with a
partly mistaken tradition concerning it, and an incapacity, as it
might almost seem at times, for eventual reconciliation thereto.
Meantime Italy had armed itself once more, in haste, and the imperial
brothers set forth for the Alps.