tempted his followers but their hopes of a share in the booty? But we--
we enlist them in the name of the loftiest ideas and warmest desires of
the human heart, and, as the prize of victory, we show them the ancient
faith with freedom of thought--the ancient loveliness of life. The
beings whom the Christians can win over--a patch-work medley of loathsome
Barbarians--let them wear out their lives as they choose! We are Greeks
--the thinking brain, the subtle and sentient soul of the world. The
polity, the empire, that we shall found on the overthrow of Theodosius
and of Rome shall be Hellenic, purely Hellenic. The old national spirit,
which made the Greeks omnipotent against the millions of Darius and
Xerxes, shall live again, and we will keep the Barbarians at a distance
as a Patrician forbids his inferiors to count themselves as belonging to
his illustrious house. The Greek gods, Greek heroism, Greek art and
Greek learning, under our rule shall rise from the dust--all the more
promptly for the stringent oppression under which their indomitable
spirit has so long languished."

"You speak to my heart!" cried Karnis. "My old blood flows more swiftly
already, and if I only had a thousand talents left to give. . ."

"You would stake them on the future Greek Empire," said Olympius
eagerly. "And we have adherents without number who feel as you do,
my trusty friend. We shall succeed--as the great Julian would have
succeeded but for the assassins who laid him low at so early an age;
for Rome. . ."

"Rome is still powerful."

"Rome is a colossus built up of a thousand blocks; but among them a
hundred and more be but loosely in their places, and are ready to drop