We have not come for battle, but to guard the
peace. Yet it is easy for Atropos, that cruel fate, to clip the
slender thread of life and send men on to die land of shades. If
this was what the augur meant, no Roman in the days of Tiberius has
ever set forth upon a more serious adventure."
"You are given to melancholy, this autumn afternoon, my comrade
Quintus," the other says; "you are feeling that sadness which comes
to men when the Dryads move over the earth and touch the leaves
into crimson and gold and brown."
"Not so," answers Quintus; "but I am remembering that I have come
into a land where a strange Teacher is speaking to men of a future
life. Yet are men to live again? I have seen the marble tombs on
the Appia Via where the Scipios, the Metelli, and so many more of
our great Romans lie asleep. Shall I soon follow them? Is it an
endless slumber? What is it that the new Rabbi from Nazareth
means, when in the city yonder he speaks of another life?"
"A fig for your weird autumn fancy," responds Aulus; "down to the
streets of Hierosolyma we will go, and among their novel sights we
will forget your serious meditations.
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