e's glory,
twenty galleys of the enemy were captured.

Upon his return from the cruise, Arrius had warm welcome on the
mole at Misenum. The young man attending him very early attracted
the attention of his friends there; and to their questions as to
who he was the tribune proceeded in the most affectionate manner
to tell the story of his rescue and introduce the stranger,
omitting carefully all that pertained to the latter's previous
history. At the end of the narrative, he called Ben-Hur to him,
and said, with a hand resting affectionately upon his shoulder,

"Good friends, this is my son and heir, who, as he is to take my
property--if it be the will of the gods that I leave any--shall
be known to you by my name. I pray you all to love him as you
love me."

Speedily as opportunity permitted, the adoption was formally perfected.
And in such manner the brave Roman kept his faith with Ben-Hur,
giving him happy introduction into the imperial world. The month
succeeding Arrius's return, the armilustrium was celebrated with
the utmost magnificence in the theater of Scaurus. One side of
the structure was taken up with military trophies; among which
by far the most conspicuous and most admired were twenty prows,
complemented by their corresponding aplustra, cut bodily from as
many galleys; and over them, so as to be legible to the eighty thousand
spectators in the seats, was this inscription:

----------------------------------------------
TAKEN FROM THE PIRATES IN THE GULF OF EURIPUS,
BY
QUINTUS ARRIUS,
DUUMVIR.
----------------------------------------------

BOOK FOURTH

"Alva. Should the monarch prove unjust--
And, at this time--

Queen. Then I must wait for justice
Until it come; and they are happiest far
Whose consciences may calmly wait their right."
Schiller, Don Carlos (act iv., sc. xv.)

CHAPTER I

The month to which we now come is July, the year that of our Lord
29, and the place Antioch, then Queen of the East, and next to
Rome the strongest, if not the most populous, city in the world.

There is an opinion that the extravagance and dissoluteness of
the age had their origin in Rome, and spread thence throughout
the empire; that the great cities but reflected the manners of
their mistress on the Tiber. This may be doubted. The reaction
of the conquest would seem to have bee