owering gentians among them, had been the line
of its rampart! An epitome of all that was liveliest, most animated
and adventurous, in the old Greek people of which it was an offshoot,
it had enhanced the effect of these gifts by concentration within
narrow limits. The band of "devoted youth,"--hiera neotes.+--of the
younger brothers, devoted to the gods and whatever luck the gods might
afford, because there was no room for them at home--went forth, bearing
the sacred flame from the mother hearth; itself a flame, of power to
consume the whole material of existence in clear light and heat, with
no smouldering residue. The life of those vanished townsmen, so
brilliant and revolutionary, applying so abundantly the personal
qualities which alone just then Marius seemed to value, associated
itself with the actual figure of his companion, standing there before
him, his face enthusiastic with the sudden thought of all that; and
struck him vividly as precisely the fitting opportunity for a nature
like his, so hungry for control, for ascendency over men.

Marius noticed also, however, as high spirits [110] flagged at last, on
the way home through the heavy dew of the evening, more than physical
fatigue in Flavian, who seemed to find no refreshment in the coolness.
There had been something feverish, perhaps, and like the beginning of
sickness, about his almost forced gaiety, in this sudden spasm of
spring; and by the evening of the next day he was lying with a burning
spot on his forehead, stricken, as was thought from the first, by the
terrible new disease.

NOTES

93. +Corrected from the Macmillan edition misprint "singal."

98. +Transliteration: es kallos graphein. Translation: "To write
beautifully."

100. +Iliad 1.432-33, 437. Transliteration:

Hoi d' hote de limenos polybentheos entos hikonto,
Histia men steilanto, thesan d' en nei melaine...
Ek de kai autoi bainon epi phegmini thalasses.

Etext editor's translation:

When they had safely made deep harbor
They took in the sail, laid it in their black ship...
And went ashore just past the breakers.

109. +Transliteration: hiera neotes. Pater translates the phrase,
"devoted youth."

CHAPTER VII: A PAGAN END

[111] FOR the fantastical colleague of the philosophic emperor Marcus
Aurelius, returning in triumph from the East, had brought in his train,
among the enemies of Rome, one by no means a captive. People actually
sicke