Juno's temple, and a live goose was yearly carried in triumph, upon a
soft litter, in a golden cage, as long as any heathen festivals lasted.
The reward of Pontius Cominius does not appear; but surely he, and the
old senators who died for their country's sake, deserved to be for ever
remembered for their brave contempt of life when a service could be done
to the State.

The truth of the whole narrative is greatly doubted, and it is suspected
that the Gallic conquest was more complete than the Romans ever chose to
avow. Their history is far from clear up to this very epoch, when it is
said that all their records were destroyed; but even when place and
period are misty, great names and the main outline of their actions loom
through the cloud, perhaps exaggerated, but still with some reality; and
if the magnificent romance of the sack of Rome be not fact, yet it is
certainly history, and well worthy of note and remembrance, as one of
the finest extant traditions of a whole chain of Golden Deeds.




THE TWO FRIENDS OF SYRACUSE

B.C. 380 (CIRCA)



Most of the best and noblest of the Greeks held what was called the
Pythagorean philosophy. This was one of the many systems framed by the
great men of heathenism, when by the feeble light of nature they were,
as St. Paul says, 'seeking after God, if haply they might feel after