certainly, brought from the choice pastures of the Sabine mountains,
and conducted around the city they were to die for, in almost
continuous procession, covered with flowers and well-nigh worried to
death before the time by the crowds of people superstitiously
pressing to touch them. But certain old-fashioned Romans, in these
exceptional circumstances, demanded something more than this, in the
way of a human sacrifice after the ancient pattern; as when, not so
long since, some Greeks or Gauls had been buried alive in the Forum.
At least, human blood should be shed; and it was through a wild
multitude of fanatics, cutting their flesh with knives and whips and
licking up ardently the crimson stream, that the emperor repaired to
the temple of Bellona, and in solemn symbolic act cast the
bloodstained spear, or "dart," carefully preserved there, towards the
enemy's country-- [45] towards that unknown world of German homes,
still warm, as some believed under the faint northern twilight, with
those innocent affections of which Romans had lost the sense. And
this at least was clear, amid all doubts of abstract right or wrong
on either side, that the ruin of those homes was involved in what
Aurelius was then preparing for, with,--Yes! the gods be thanked for
that achievement of an invigorating philosophy!--almost with a light
heart.

For, in truth, that departure, really so difficult to him, for which
Marcus Aurelius had needed to brace himself so strenuously, came to
test the power of a long-studied theory of practice; and it was the
development of this theory--a theoria, literally--a view, an
intuition, of the most important facts, and still more important
possibilities, concerning man in the world, that Marius now
discovered, almost as if by accident, below the dry surface of the
manuscripts entrusted to him. The great purple rolls contained,