em one not wearing white. And when
they go, all but one who wears white and he who wore not white go out.
Three days later these two go also both wearing white. Nothing more
know I save that I be given orders at times to make the light. But let
us hasten on to the big chamber."

Between a seemingly endless labyrinth of galleries lined with closed
coffins and shelved skeletons the two passed until at last a great
noise, like a far-off droning, broke the stillness. "The meeting hath
begun," the guide said. As they neared the chamber they encountered
guards to whom the guide gave a pass-word; and again before they
entered, other guards demanded a sign which was given by a grip of the
hand. Once inside, the Phoenician pushed gently through the circle
assembled to a place near the front.

"Hourly do you pray," the speaker was saying. "Yea, hourly for relief.
But the cycles of the years roll on in blood and pain while the heel of
Rome grinds into brute servility all save a favored few. Even have
women by the hand of Rome been stripped naked, their legs painted,
their bodies shackled and thrown into caverns where, with pick in hand,
they dug stones from the rock to build palaces for brutes. If the gods
yet live why do they not hear the bitter crying of the helpless when
the branding iron is laid to the flesh until slave pens smell like cook
shops? Why do not the gods hear the cries of humankind fed on pods and
roots and skins, beaten with clubs and hung on crosses, for no evil
save honest toil for thankless masters?

"Oppression hath grown mighty until all the world is divided into two
classes, the slave who toileth and the master who remaineth idle.
Millions are there of the one--few of the other. Yea, for their very
number are toilers counted as beasts. Since Caesar brought his fifty
and three thousand slaves from far Gaul hath slaves come to be in
numbers like the sands of the sea. On the market when their bones have
become stiff are they not sold for food to fatten eels for Roman
Senators? And those who escape being food for tigers and hyenas, or
nailed to a cross, are they not lost in the fearful pit of pollution of
the Esquiline Cemetery? And in the arena--were not eight thousand
gladiators slaughtered in one year?

"A sweeper of the amphitheatre was I. Mine was the task of dragging
from the arena dead gladiators, shoveling up the blood, sprinkling
fresh sand over dark spots yet warm, sharpening sword