to any trumpet-blast, but rolled on in spreading waves down every
street and alley; it reached the ships in the port, and rang through the
halls of the rich and the hovels of the poor; it even found a dull echo
in the light-house at the point of Pharos, where the watchman was
trimming the lamp for the night; and in an incredibly short time all
Alexandria knew that Caesar had dealt a death-blow to the worship of the
heathen gods.

The great and fateful rumor was heard, too, in the Museum and the
Serapeum; once more the youth who had grown up in the high schools of the
city, studying the wisdom of the heathen, gathered together; men who had
refined and purified their intellect at the spring of Greek philosophy
and fired their spirit with enthusiasm for all that was good and lovely
in the teaching of ancient Greece--these obeyed the summons of their
master, Olympius, or flew to arms under the leadership of Orestes, the
Governor, for the High-Priest himself had to see to the defences of the
Serapeum.--Olympius had weapons ready in abundance, and the youths
rapidly collected round the standards he had prepared, and rushed into
the square before the Prefect's house to drive away the monks and to
insist that Cynegius should return forthwith to Rome with the Emperor's
edict.

Young and noble lads were they who marched forth to the struggle,
equipped like the Helleman soldiers of the palmy days of Athens; and as
they went they sang a battle-song of Callinus which some one--who, no one
could tell--had slightly altered for the occasion:

"Come, rouse ye Greeks; what, sleeping still!
Is courage dead, is shame unknown?
Start up, rush forth with zealous will,
And smite the mocking Christians down!"

Everything that opposed their progress was overthrown. Two maniples of
foot-soldiers who held the high-road across the Bruchium attempted to
turn them, but the advance of the inflamed young warriors was
irresistible and they reached the street of the Caesareum and the square
in front of the Prefect's residence. Here they paused to sing the last
lines of their battlesong:

"Fate seeks the coward out at home,
He dies unwept, unknown to fame,
While by the hero's honored tomb
Our grandsons' grandsons shall proclaim:
'In the great conflict's fiercest hour
He stood unmoved, our shield and tower.'"

It was here, at the wide opening into the square, that the co