swaggering in such a blaze of gems you may wager your house--if you have
one--that his birthplace lies not very far from Syria."

"Now, that one, in a mother-of-pearl shell on two wheels, is the Jew
Poseidonius," the Pannonian put in. "I am quartered on his father. But
he is dressed like a Greek."

At this the centurion, in his delight at knowing something, opened his
mouth with a broad grin: "I am a native here," said he, "and I can tell
you the Jew would make you answer for it if you took him for anything but
a Greek."

"And quite right," added another soldier, from Antioch. "The Jews here
are many, but they have little in common with those in Palestine. They
wish to pass for Greeks; they speak Greek, assume Greek names, and even
cease to believe in the great God their father; they study Greek
philosophy, and I know one who worships in the Temple of Serapis."

"Many do the same in Rome," said a man of Ostia. "I know an epigram
which ridicules them for it."

At this point they were interrupted, for Martialis pointed to a tall man
who was coming toward them, and whom his sharp eye had recognized as
Macrinus, the prefect of the praetorians. In an instant the soldiers
were erect and rigid, but still many a helmeted head was turned toward
the spot where their chief stood talking in an undertone to the Magian
Serapion.

Macrinus had persuaded Caesar to send for the exorciser, to test his
arts. Immediately after the performance, however late it might be, the