solicitude, even though Calpurnius should return. For how shall I meet
him?--as a Persian, or a Roman?--as a friend, or an enemy? As a brother, I
can never cease to love him; as a public enemy of Rome, I may be obliged
to condemn him.

You have indeed gratified me by what you have said concerning the public
works in which the emperor is now engaged. Would that the erection of
temples and palaces might draw away his thoughts from the East. The new
wall, of so much wider sweep, with which he is now enclosing the city, is
well worthy the greatness of his genius. Yet do we, my Curtius, perceive
in this rebuilding and strengthening of the walls of Rome, no indication
of our country's decline? Were Rome vigorous and sound, as once, in her
limbs, what were the need of this new defence about the heart? It is to me
a confession of weakness, rather than any evidence of greatness and
strength. Aurelian achieves more for Rome by the strictness of his
discipline, and his restoration of the ancient simplicity and severity
among the troops, than he could by a triple wall about the metropolis.
Rome will then already have fallen, when a Gothic army shall have
penetrated so far as even to have seen her gates. The walls of Rome are
her living and moving walls of flesh. Her old and crumbling ramparts of
masonry, upon which we have so often climbed in sport, rolling down into
the surrounding ditch huge masses, have ever been to me, when I have
thought of them, pregnant signs of security and power.

The ambassadors, Petronius and Varro, early on the morning succeeding
their interview with the Queen, departed for the city. They were soon
followed by Zenobia and her train of counsellors and attendants. It had
been before agreed that the princess, Fausta, and myself, should remain
longer at the palace, for the purpose of visiting, as had been proposed,
the aged Christian hermit, whose retreat is among the fastnesses of the