1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Set against the backdrop of N√Æmes in A.D. 213, Sabine Baring-Gould's "Perpetua" intertwines historical fiction with rich theological inquiry, chronicling the life and martyrdom of the early Christian figure, Perpetua. With its vivid descriptions and captivating prose, Baring-Gould paints a portrait of a society grappling with pagan beliefs and the nascent Christian doctrine, employing a narrative style that reflects the tumultuous intersection of faith and politics. The novel is notable for its deep psychological insight into its characters, particularly Perpetua, whose courageous defiance serves as a testament to spiritual conviction amidst oppression. Sabine Baring-Gould was not only a prolific writer but also an Anglican clergyman deeply intrigued by the intersection of faith and cultural history. His extensive research into early Christianity, coupled with his experiences in different parts of Europe, informs this evocative narrative. Baring-Gould's enduring passion for folklore and antiquity shines through his work, offering readers a profound understanding of the spiritual struggles of early Christians. "Perpetua" is essential reading for those interested in the historical underpinnings of early Christian beliefs and their representation in literature. Baring-Gould's careful construction of character and setting invites readers to reflect on themes of faith, sacrifice, and identity, making it not only a tale of personal courage but a broader commentary on the nature of belief itself. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
Perpetua - A Story of Nimes in A.D. 213
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its heart, Sabine Baring-Gould’s Perpetua - A Story of Nimes in A.D. 213 traces the fraught intersection of private conscience and public order in a Roman provincial city poised between inherited traditions and unsettling currents of change, following a young woman whose very name suggests steadfastness as she negotiates the claims of family, civic duty, and belief while the routines of civic life and the far-reaching pressures of empire weigh upon every choice, revealing how love, loyalty, and law can converge, collide, and ultimately expose the fragile bonds that hold a community together when identity and authority are in question.
Written by the English author and Anglican clergyman Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924), this novel belongs to the Victorian tradition of historically grounded romance and adventure. First appearing in the late nineteenth century, Perpetua situates its drama in Nîmes (ancient Nemausus) in A.D. 213, during the Severan period of the Roman Empire. The title signals both place and time with deliberate clarity, inviting readers into Roman Gaul rather than the more familiar centers of the empire. Baring-Gould’s longstanding interest in antiquity infuses the narrative with a sense of temporal distance and moral inquiry, while keeping the human stakes immediate and intelligible.
The premise is concise and compelling: a young woman in Nîmes must navigate the complex expectations of family, community, and empire as events unsettle the apparent equilibrium of her world. Without racing into revelation, the book opens into a society governed by ritual, reputation, and layered allegiances, where patronage networks and civic ceremonies frame daily life. Baring-Gould crafts an experience that blends measured, descriptive narration with moments of urgency. The voice is steady and observant, attentive to setting and character, while the mood oscillates between contemplative seriousness and the tense energy of impending decisions that cannot be postponed without cost.
Set in A.D. 213, the story occupies a historical moment that foregrounds questions of belonging, duty, and the meaning of citizenship on the empire’s provincial edge. Themes emerge organically from this backdrop: the pull of tradition against the pressure of innovation, the negotiation of status in a stratified society, and the strains placed on conscience by law and custom. The city itself, with its layered identities and public rituals, becomes a stage on which competing visions of order and goodness contend. The novel encourages readers to consider how personal integrity is tested when collective expectations and private convictions drift out of alignment.
Baring-Gould’s craft favors clarity of scene, an even pace, and a gentle accumulation of detail that renders the period intelligible without pedantry. He threads antiquarian interest through the story as texture rather than thesis, allowing civic offices, domestic interiors, and social habits to convey the authority of place. Characters are delineated through action and conversation more than authorial intrusion, and the plot’s turns emerge from credible social pressures. The style bears the imprint of Victorian historical fiction: decorous but not inert, morally attentive without sermonizing, and inclined to juxtapose tenderness and peril so that ethical questions are felt as well as understood.
For readers today, the novel’s resonance lies in its exploration of how plural communities manage difference and dissent. The provincial Roman setting mirrors many modern concerns: the negotiation of identity in diverse cities, the friction between inherited norms and new currents, and the dilemmas that arise when law and conscience seem to part company. Perpetua’s world reminds us that historical distance can sharpen, rather than soften, the outline of contemporary questions about loyalty, justice, and care. The book invites reflection on how individuals find agency within systems that are larger and often less flexible than their private sense of right.
Approached as an immersive historical novel rather than a historical treatise, Perpetua offers readers a balanced experience of atmosphere, character, and ethical tension. It will appeal to those who value a carefully evoked setting, steady narrative momentum, and an inquiry into the costs of fidelity—to family, to civic peace, and to the demands of belief. Without spoiling its developments, one can say that the journey tests allegiances without reducing them to slogans. In opening Nîmes of A.D. 213 to modern eyes, Baring-Gould gives both a window onto Roman Gaul and a mirror for perennial human concerns.
Synopsis
Set in the Roman provincial city of Nimes in A.D. 213, the novel opens with a careful picture of civic life under the Severan emperors. Markets, guilds, and municipal offices coexist with temples, baths, and the great amphitheatre, while veterans, merchants, and native Gauls mingle with Romanized elites. Against this backdrop appears Perpetua, a young woman whose family standing places her near the city’s decision makers. Early chapters dwell on routine customs, household order, and the civic calendar, emphasizing how religion, law, and social duty structure daily existence. The story establishes a society confident in its institutions, yet marked by subtle tensions and competing loyalties.
Perpetua’s household embodies these crosscurrents. Bound by expectations of rank, alliance, and patronage, her relatives navigate obligations to the council, the imperial cult, and longstanding local networks. The narrative follows her education in manners and law, her awareness of household clients and dependents, and her cautious steps into public life. Through neighbors, kin, and acquaintances, she encounters a range of viewpoints: pragmatic officials, devout adherents of traditional rites, skeptical observers, and a small but resolute Christian group. Perpetua’s position allows access to both the magistrates’ deliberations and the quieter corners where private convictions are formed, hinting that her choices may intersect with wider civic currents.
An official celebration sharpens these currents into motion. With imperial policies reshaping status and revenue, Nimes prepares for rites honoring the emperor and the city’s patrons, blending loyalty, spectacle, and civic pride. The preparations reveal fault lines: burdens of taxation, disputes over precedence, and anxieties about order. Perpetua observes, learns the language of honor, and senses how ritual can enforce unity or deepen division. A chance encounter during the festivities draws her into circles that question prevailing customs, not through defiance but through an alternative ethic. This moment forms the story’s first pivot, setting her on a path where private conscience and public expectation begin to diverge.
Rising tensions are traced through council sessions, legal pleadings, and household negotiations. A contested claim—touching property, guardianship, or manumission—places several families at cross-purposes, and whispers of informers surface around a meeting place where Christians assemble discreetly in private homes. Perpetua’s acquaintance with these believers grows through acts of care rather than argument, revealing a community organized around service, discipline, and mutual aid. Meanwhile, civic leaders seek visible signs of cohesion to still unrest, and the city’s calendar brings additional observances. The narrative balances intimate conversations with procedural detail, showing how reputations, oaths, and paper decrees shape destinies as surely as personal affection.
An external shock unsettles the careful order. News of disturbance along the roads and frontier alarms the populace, and a disrupted convoy or threatened estate stirs fears of disorder. To reassure the city, magistrates arrange public entertainments and reaffirm the imperial cult, but anxiety heightens scrutiny of those who seem apart. Perpetua witnesses the harsh edges of spectacle and the alternative response of quiet mercy, and these contrasts give form to her internal debate. The story places her amid crowds in the amphitheatre, in council halls, and at household thresholds, tracking how civic rituals, designed to bind the community, can also expose differences in values and allegiance.
Midway, a revelation alters the stakes. Perpetua learns of a connection linking someone close to her with schemes that could imperil both reputation and safety. The discovery forces her to weigh truth-telling against loyalty, and prudence against principle. A journey beyond the city’s walls—to estates, shrines, or the aqueduct country—broadens the canvas, setting Roman monuments and older sacred landscapes side by side. As nature, memory, and law converge, Perpetua refines the grounds of her choices. The novel uses these interludes to clarify the persistence of local traditions under Roman forms and to show how private resolve takes shape away from the crowd’s gaze.
Returning to Nimes, Perpetua finds procedures hardening. Authorities tighten oversight, summoning citizens to sacrifice and to affirm civic unity, while adversaries exploit debts and marriage arrangements to compel compliance. A hearing brings together litigants, witnesses, and councilors, and Perpetua’s presence links separate strands of obligation, affection, and duty. Discreet allies emerge, and subtle acts of assistance protect the vulnerable without open confrontation. The Christian group, already practiced in discretion, navigates these pressures through counsel, prayer, and practical support. Each scene escalates consequence without abandoning plausibility, showing how compulsion can be exerted through honor, kinship, and contract as effectively as by overt force.
The narrative builds toward a public confrontation in which choices must be declared. Gathered in a visible place of authority, parties stake positions that cannot be reconciled by delay. Perpetua’s decision, prepared by prior scenes, takes concrete form and affects those around her in unexpected ways. The outcome for several figures turns on words spoken in the open and on acts performed before witnesses, yet the novel refrains from sensational turns, anchoring events in the city’s legal and religious frameworks. Without detailing final consequences, the chapters present a decisive crossing of thresholds that redefines relationships, reputations, and the accepted meaning of civic loyalty.
In closing movements, the city adjusts to what has occurred. Some bonds tighten, others loosen, and certain arrangements are quietly rescinded or confirmed. The novel emphasizes endurance rather than triumph, presenting a community learning to accommodate new convictions within a venerable civic order. Perpetua’s story crystallizes a larger transition: Roman law and provincial custom encountering a faith that reshapes the understanding of duty, mercy, and belonging. The final pages return to ordinary rhythms—households, markets, and councils—now complicated by memory and hope. The book’s message is one of steady conscience under public pressure and of cultural change proceeding through personal allegiance and measured, visible acts.
Historical Context
Set in Nemausus (modern Nmes) in A.D. 213, the narrative inhabits Gallia Narbonensis, the oldest Roman province north of the Alps and a hinge between Italy and Hispania. The city was a veteran colony with long-established Roman institutions, monumental public works, and a mixed Gallo-Roman population. Its amphitheatre (first century), the Augustan Maison Carre, and the Pont du Gard aqueduct testify to urban sophistication. The Via Domitia (opened 118 BCE) threaded commerce and military traffic through the region. Politically, the Severan dynasty ruled from Rome, and locally a curial elite administered taxation, justice, and civic cults amid intensifying imperial demands and a diversifying religious landscape.
The Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, issued by Emperor Caracalla, granted Roman citizenship to virtually all free inhabitants of the empire. Contemporary observers like Cassius Dio linked the measure to fiscal aims: extending the 5 percent inheritance tax (vicesima hereditatium) and other levies to a broader base. In Gaul, new citizens often adopted the nomen "Aurelius," reflecting the emperors family name. The edict reshaped municipal law, marriage rights, and legal recourse, while leaving local customs resilient. In the books world, this abrupt, universal citizenship recasts identities, expands curial obligations, and sharpens conflicts over taxes, legal standing, and the meaning of belonging in Nemausus.
The Severan military-fiscal system weighs heavily on the period. Septimius Severus had enlarged the army and significantly raised pay; Caracalla increased compensation again, amplifying the treasurys strain. Coinage debasement accelerated: the denarius, c. 80 percent silver under Marcus Aurelius, fell toward roughly half by the early third century. In 215 Caracalla would introduce the antoninianus, nominally worth two denarii yet containing only modestly more silver, signaling further monetary distortion. For provincial cities this meant requisitions, billeting, price volatility, and indebted curiales. The novel mirrors these pressures in its portrayals of provisioning, municipal shortfalls, and the uneasy dependence of civilians on an increasingly privileged soldiery.
In 213 Caracalla campaigned along the Rhine and Danube, winning the title Germanicus Maximus after actions against tribes newly labeled Alamanni. The Rhine limes and routes through Gallia Lugdunensis and Narbonensis carried troops, couriers, and supply trains, with Lugdunum (Lyon) a key node and the Rhne corridor vital for logistics. Though Nemausus lay off the main warfront, imperial movements affected its markets and ritual life, including imperial cult observances and loyalty displays. The book reflects how distant wars intruded into provincial rhythmsthrough rumors, levy demands, and the presence of veteransand how local magistrates navigated shifting directives from governors and the praetorian prefects.
Religious plurality defined early-third-century Gaul. Nemausus honored Roman civic gods and the imperial cult, while older Celtic devotions clustered around the citys spring sanctuary. Mystery cultsnotably Mithras, popular among soldiersflourished. Christianity, established earlier in Lugdunum and Vienne (witness the 177 persecutions), persisted under constraints after Severuss c. 202 edict discouraging conversions. The celebrated martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas in Carthage (203) provided a contemporary paradigm of steadfast faith. In Baring-Goulds setting, conversions, household divisions, and discreet gatherings evoke these realities, dramatizing tensions between public cult expectations, military religiosity, and a minority Christian conscience within a Romanized civic order.
Municipal politics and civic spectacle frame daily life. Decurions (curiales) managed taxation, public works, and games, bearing personal liability for shortfallsa burden sharpened after 212. The amphitheatre of Nemausus hosted gladiatorial shows and venationes, instruments of civic prestige that consumed resources. Collegia of craftsmen and Augustales supported ritual life; grain supply and water infrastructure (the first-century aqueduct) demanded constant oversight. The book draws on these institutions to depict the ethical calculus of elites who must balance honor, entertainment, and fiscal solvency, and to contrast public magnificence with private anxieties, debt, and the social costs of maintaining Roman urban identity amid imperial exactions.
Gallo-Roman society in Narbonensis fused Celtic heritagethe Volcae Arecomici once dominated the areawith Roman law, language, and dress. Estates on the garrigues produced wine and oil; trade moved along the Via Domitia and Rhne to Narbo and Massilia. Earlier industries, such as terra sigillata from La Graufesenque (Millau), had peaked, hinting at shifting economic centers by the third century. Local memory retained Augustan iconography, like the Nemausus crocodile coin type celebrating Egypts conquest. The novel leverages such material culture and onomastics to root its characters in a world where statusfree, freed, slave, colonusand new universal citizenship intersect uneasily with patronage, contracts, and customary law.
By staging its action in A.D. 213, the book becomes a critique of autocracy, fiscal extraction, and civic ritual. Universal citizenship appears as a legal boon that masks heavier taxation and coerced municipal service. Military privilege and the cult of spectacle expose hierarchies and moral ambiguities, while the precariousness of curiales highlights systemic inequities. The religious subplot challenges conformity to imperial cult and violent entertainments, offering Christian sociability as counterculture. Through household disputes, tax conflicts, and scenes around the arena and forum, the narrative interrogates class divides, questions the justice of state priorities, and reveals the costs borne by provincials to sustain imperial grandeur.
Perpetua - A Story of Nimes in A.D. 213
I. — EST
THE Kalends (first) of March.
A brilliant day in the town of Nemausus[1]—the modem Nîmes—in the Province of Gallia Narbonensis, that arrogated to itself the title of being the province, a title that has continued in use to the present day, as distinguishing the olive-growing, rose-producing, ruin-strewn portion of Southern France, whose fringe is kissed by the blue Mediterranean.
Not a cloud in the bugloss-blue sky. The sun streamed down, with a heat that was unabsorbed, and with rays unshorn by any intervenient vapour, as in our northern clime. Yet a cool air from the distant snowy Alps touched, as with the kiss of a vestal, every heated brow, and refreshed it.
The Alps, though invisible from Nemausus, make themselves felt, now in refreshing breezes, then as raging icy blasts.
The anemones were in bloom, and the roses were budding. Tulips spangled the vineyards, and under the olives and in the most arid soil, there appeared the grape hyacinth and the star of Bethlehem.
At the back of the white city stands a rock, the extreme limit of a spur of the Cebennae, forming an amphitheatre, the stones scrambled over by blue and white periwinkle, and the crags heavy with syringa and flowering thorns.
In the midst of this circus of rock welled up a river of transparent bottle-green water, that filled a reservoir, in which circled white swans.
On account of the incessant agitation of the I water, that rose in bells, and broke in rhythmic waves against the containing breastwork, neither were the swans mirrored in the surface, nor did the white temple of Nemausus reflect its peristyle of channelled pillars in the green flood.
This temple occupied one side of the basin; on the other, a little removed, were the baths, named after Augustus, to which some of the water was conducted, after it had passed beyond the precinct within which it was regarded as sacred.
It would be hard to find a more beautiful scene, or see a gayer gathering than that assembled near the Holy Fountain on this first day of March.
Hardly less white than the swans that dreamily swam in spirals, was the balustrade of limestone that surrounded the sheet of heaving water. At intervals on this breasting stood pedestals, each supporting a statue in Carrara marble. Here was Diana in buskins, holding a bow in her hand, in the attitude of running, her right hand turned to draw an arrow from the quiver at her back. There was the Gallic god Camulus, in harness, holding up a six-rayed wheel, all gilt, to signify the sun. There was a nymph pouring water from her urn; again appeared Diana contemplating her favourite flower, the white poppy.
But in the place of honour, in the midst of the public walk before the fountain, surrounded by acacias and pink-blossomed Judas trees, stood the god Nemausus, who was at once the presiding deity over the fountain, and the reputed founder of the city. He was represented as a youth, of graceful form, almost feminine, and though he bore some military insignia, yet seemed too girl- like and timid to appear in war.
The fountain had, in very truth, created the city.[1q] This marvellous upheaval of a limpid river out of the heart of the earth had early attracted settlers to it, who had built their rude cabins beside the stream and who paid divine honours to the fountain. Around it they set up a circle of rude stones, and called the place Nemet—that is to say, the Sacred Enclosure. After a while came Greek settlers, and they introduced a new civilisation and new ideas. They at once erected an image of the deity of the fountain, and called this deity Nemausios. The spring had been female to the Gaulish occupants of the settlement; it now became male, but in its aspect the deity still bore indications of feminine origin. Lastly, the place became a Roman town. Now beautiful statuary had taken the place of the monoliths of unhewn stone that had at one time bounded the sacred spring.
On this first day of March the inhabitants of Nemausus were congregated near the fountain, all in holiday costume.
Among them ran and laughed numerous young girls, all with wreaths of white hyacinths or of narcissus on their heads, and their clear musical voices rang as bells in the fresh air.
Yet, jocund as the scene was, to such as looked closer there was observable an under-current of alarm that found expression in the faces of the elder men and women of the throng, at least in those of such persons as had their daughters flower-crowned.
Many a parent held the child with convulsive clasp, and the eyes of fathers and mothers alike followed their darlings with a greed, as though desirous of not losing one glimpse, not missing one word, of the little creature on whom so many kisses were bestowed, and in whom so much love was centred.
For this day was specially dedicated to the founder and patron of the town, who supplied it with water from his unfailing urn, and once in every seven years on this day a human victim was offered in sacrifice to the god Nemausus, to ensure the continuance of his favour, by a constant efflux of water, pure, cool and salubrious.
The victim was chosen from among the daughters of the old Gaulish families of the town, and was selected from among girls between the ages of seven and seventeen. Seven times seven were bound to appear on this day before the sacred spring, clothed in white and crowned with spring flowers. None knew which would be chosen and which rejected. The selection was not made by either the priests or the priestesses attached to the temple. Nor was it made by the magistrates of Nemausus. No parent might redeem his child. Chance or destiny alone determined who was to be chosen out of the forty-nine who appeared before the god.
Suddenly from the temple sounded a blast of horns, and immediately the peristyle (colonnade) filled with priests and priestesses in white, the former with wreaths of silvered olive leaves around their heads, the latter crowned with oak leaves of gold foil.
The trumpeters descended the steps. The crowd fell back, and a procession advanced. First came players on the double flute, or syrinx, with red bands round their hair. Then followed dancing girls performing graceful movements about the silver image of the god that was borne on the shoulders of four maidens covered with spangled veils of the finest oriental texture. On both sides paced priests with brazen trumpets.
Before and behind the image were boys bearing censers that diffused aromatic smoke, which rose and spread in all directions, wafted by the soft air that spun above the cold waters of the fountain.
Behind the image and the dancing girls marched the priests and priestesses, singing alternately a hymn to the god.
"Hail, holy fountain, limpid and eternal. Green as the emerald, infinite, abundant. Sweet, unpolluted, cold and clear as crystal. Father Nemausus. Hail, thou Archegos, founder of the city, Crowned with oak leaves, cherishing the olive, Grapes with thy water annually flushing. Father Nemausus. Thou to the thirsty givest cool refreshment, Thou to the herdsman yieldest yearly increase, Thou from the harvest wardest off diseases, Father Nemausus, Seven are the hills on which old Rome is founded. Seven are the hills engirdling thy fountain. Seven are the planets set in heaven ruling. Father Nemausus. Thou, the perennial, lovest tender virgins. Do thou accept the sacrifice we offer; May thy selection be the best and fittest. Father Nemausus."
Then the priests and priestesses drew up in lines between the people and the fountain, and the aedile of the city, standing forth, read out from a roll the names of seven times seven maidens; and as each name was called, a white- robed, flower-crowned child fluttered from among the crowd and was received by the priestly band.
When all forty-nine were gathered together, then they were formed into a ring, holding hands, and round this ring passed the bearers of the silver image.
Now again rose the hymn:
"Hail, holy fountain, limpid and eternal. Green as the emerald, infinite, abundant. Sweet, unpolluted, cold and dear as crystal. Father Nemausus.
And as the bearers carried the image round the circle, suddenly a golden apple held by the god, fell and touched a graceful girl who stood in the ring.
"Come forth, Lucilla," said the chief priestess. "It is the will of the god that thou speak the words. Begin."
Then the damsel loosed her hands from those she held, stepped into the midst of the circle and raised the golden pippin. At once the entire ring of children began to revolve, like a dance of white butterflies in early spring; and as they swung from right to left, the girl began to recite at a rapid pace a jingle of words in a Gallic dialect, that ran thus:
"One and two Drops of dew, Three and four, Shut the door."
As she spoke she indicated a child at each numeral,
"Five and six Pick up sticks. Seven and eight. Thou most wait"
Now there passed a thrill through the crowd, and the children whirled quicker.
"Nine and ten Pass again. Golden pippin, lo! I cast. Thou, Alcmene, touched at last."
At the word "last" she threw the apple and struck a girl, and at once left the ring, cast her coronet of narcissus into the fountain, and ran into the crowd. With a gasp of relief she was caught in the arms of her mother, who held her to her heart, and sobbed with joy that her child was spared. For her the risk was past, as she would be over age when the next septennial sacrifice came round.
Now it was the turn of Alcmene.
She held the ball, paused a moment, looking about her, and then, as the troop of children revolved, she rattled the rhyme and threw the pippin at a damsel named Tertiola. Whereupon she in her turn cast her garland, that was of white violets, into the fountain, and withdrew.
Again the wreath of children circled and Tertiola repeated the jingle till she came to "Touched at last," when a girl named Aelia, was selected, and came into the middle. This was a child of seven, who was shy and clung to her mother. The mother fondled her, and said, "My Aelia, I Rejoice that thou art not the fated victim. The god has surrendered thee to me. Be speedy with the verse, and I will give thee crustula that are in my basket."
So encouraged, the frightened child rattled out some lines, then halted, her memory had failed, and she had to be reminded of the rest. At last she also was free, ran to her mother's bosom and was comforted with cakes.
A young man with folded arms stood lounging near the great basin; occasionally he addressed a shorter man, a client apparently, from his cringing manner and the set smile he wore when addressing or addressed by the other.
"By Hercules!" said the first,—"or let me rather swear by Venus and her wayward son, the Bowbearer, that is a handsome girl yonder, she who is the tallest, and methinks the eldest of all. What is her name, my Callipodius?"
"She that looks so scared, O supremity of excellent youths, Aemilius Lentulus Varro! I believe that she is the daughter and only child of the widow Quinta, who lost her husband two years ago, and has refused marriage since. They whisper strange things concerning her."
"What things, thou tittle-tattle bearer?"
"Nay, I bear but what is desired of me. Didst thou not inquire of me who the maiden was? I have a mind to make no answer. But who can deny anything to thee?"
"By the genius of Augustus," exclaimed the patron, "thou makest me turn away my head at thy unctuous flattery. The peasants do all their cooking in oil, and when their meals be set on the table the appetite is taken away, there is too much oil. It is so with thy conversation. Come, thy news."
"I speak but what I feel. But see how the circle is shrunk. As to the scandal thou wouldst hear, it is this. The report goes that the widow and her daughter are infected with a foreign superstition, and worship an ass's head."
"An ass's head hast thou to hold and repeat such lies. Look at the virgin. Didst ever see one more modest, one who more bears on her brow the stamp of sound reason and of virtue? The next thou wilt say is—"
"That these Christians devour young children."
"This is slander, not scandal. By Jupiter Camulus! the circle is reduced to four, and she, that fair maid, is still in it. There is Quintilla, the daughter of Largus; look at him, how he eyes her with agony in his face! There is Vestilia Patercola. I would to the gods that the fair—what is her name?"
"Perpetua, daughter of Aulus Har—"
"Ah!" interrupted the patron, uneasily. "Quintilla is out."
