."

"You would stake them on the future Greek Empire," said Olympius
eagerly. "And we have adherents without number who feel as you do,
my trusty friend. We shall succeed--as the great Julian would have
succeeded but for the assassins who laid him low at so early an age; for
Rome..."

"Rome is still powerful."

"Rome is a colossus built up of a thousand blocks; but among them a
hundred and more be but loosely in their places, and are ready to drop
away from the body of the foul monster--sooner rather than later. Our
shout alone will shake them down, and they will fall on our side, we may
choose the best for our own use. Ere long--a few months only--the hosts
will gather in the champaign country at the foot of Vesuvius, by land
and by sea; Rome will open its gates wide to us who bring her back her
old gods; the Senate will proclaim the emperor deposed and the Republic
restored. Theodosius will come out against us. But the Idea for which
we go forth to fight will hover before us, will stir the hearts of those
soldiers and officers who would gladly--ah! how gladly-sacrifice to the
Olympian gods and who only kiss the wounds of the crucified Jew under
compulsion. They will desert from the labarum, which Constantine carried
to victory, to our standards; and those standards are all there, ready
for use; they have been made in this city and are lying hidden in the
house of Apollodorus. Heaven-sent daemons showed them in a vision to my
disciple Ammonius, when he was full of the divinity and lost in ecstasy,
and I have had them made from his instructions."

"And what do they represent?"

"The bust of Serapis with the 'modius' on his head. It is framed in a
circle with the signs of the zodiac and the images of the great Olympian
deities. We have given our god the head of Zeus, and the corn-measure
on his head is emblematic of the blessing that the husbandman hopes for.
The zodiac promises us a good star, and the figures representing it
are not the common emblems, but each deeply significant. The Twins,
for instance, are the mariner's divinities, Castor and Pollux; Hercules
stands by the Lion whom he has subdued; and the Fishes are dolphins,
which love music. In the Scales, one holds the cross high in the air
while the other is weighed down by Apollo's laurel-wreath and the bolts
of Zeus; in short, our standard displays everything that is most dear
to the soul of a Greek or that fills him with devotion. Above all, Nike
hovers