Vergilius

Vergilius

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vergilius, by Irving Bacheller This
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Title: Vergilius A Tale of the Coming of Christ
Author: Irving Bacheller
Release Date: August 8, 2005 [EBook #16491]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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VERGILIUS ***

Produced by Al Haines

Vergilius
A Tale of the Coming of Christ
By
Irving Bacheller

Author of

"Eben Holden" "D'ri and I" "Darrel of the Blessed Isles"

New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1904

Copyright, 1904, by IRVING BACHELLER.
All rights reserved.
Published August, 1904.

Vergilius
A Tale of the Coming of Christ
CHAPTER 1
Rome had passed the summits and stood looking into the dark valley of
fourteen hundred years. Behind her the graves of Caesar and Sallust
and Cicero and Catullus and Vergil and Horace; before her centuries of
madness and treading down; round about her a multitude sickening of
luxury, their houses filled with spoil, their mouths with folly, their
souls with discontent; above her only mystery and silence; in her train,
philosophers questioning if it were not better for a man had he never
been born--deeming life a misfortune and extinction the only happiness;
poets singing no more of "pleasantries and trifles," but seeking favor
with poor obscenities. Soon they were even to celebrate the virtue of
harlots, the integrity of thieves, the tenderness of murderers, the justice
of oppression. Leading the caravan were types abhorrent and
self-opposed--effeminate men, masculine women, cheerful cynics,
infidel priests, wealthy people with no credit, patricians, honoring and

yet despising the gods, hating and yet living on the populace. Here was
the spectacle of a republican empire, and an emperor gathering power
while he affected to disdain it.
The splendor of the capital had attracted from all nations the idle rich,
gamblers, speculators, voluptuaries, profligates, intriguers, criminals.
To such an extreme had luxury been carried that nothing was too sacred,
nothing too costly to be enjoyed. Digestion had become a science,
courtship an art, sleep a nightmare, comfort an accomplishment, and
the very act of living an industry. Almost one may say that the gods
lived only in the imagination of the ignorant and the jests of the learned.
In a growing patriciate home had become a weariness, marriage a form,
children a trouble, and the decline of motherhood an alarming fact.
Augustus tried the remedy of legislation. Henceforth marriage became
a duty to the state. As between men and women, things were near a
turning-point. Woman cannot long endure scorn nor the absence of
veneration. A law older than the tablets of stone shall be her defence.
Love is the price of motherhood. Soon or late, unless it be mingled in
some degree with her passion, the wonderful gift is withdrawn and men
cease to be born of her. Slowly, both the bitterness and the
understanding of its loss turn the world to virtue. A new and lofty
sentiment was appearing. Woman, weary of her part in the human
comedy, had begun to inspire a love sublime as the miracle in which
she is born to act.
Happily, there were good people in Rome, even noble families, with
whom sacrifice had still a sacred power, and who practised the four
virtues of honor, bravery, wisdom, and temperance. In rural Latium,
rich and poor clung to the old faith, and everywhere a plebeian feared
alike the assessor and the gods, and sacrificed to both.
It is no wonder the gods were falling when even Jupiter had been
outdone by a modest man who dwelt on the Palatine. One might have
seen him there any day--a rather delicate figure with shiny blue eyes
and hair now turning gray. He flung his lightning with unerring aim
across the great purple sea into Arabia, Africa, and Spain, and
northward to the German Ocean and eastward to the land of the Goths.

The genius of this remarkable man had outdone the imagination of
priest and poet. A genius for organization, like that of his illustrious
uncle, gave to Augustus a power greater than human hands had yet
wielded.
A bit of gossip had travelled far and excited his curiosity. It spoke of a
new king, with power above that of men, who was to conquer the world.
Sayings of certain learned men came out of Judea into the land of lost
hope. They told of the king of promise--that he would bring to men the
gift of immortal life, that the heavens would declare his authority.
Superstitious to the blood and