reign. But, as I was saying, there was, so
Curio informed me at the market not long afterwards, a sacrifice, on the
private altar of the temple, of ten captives. Their blood flowed just as
the great god of the temple showed himself in the horizon. It would have
done you good, Curio said, to see with what a hearty and dexterous zeal
Fronto struck the knife into their hearts--for to no inferior minister
would he delegate the sacred office.'

'Lucius,' cried Julia, 'I thought that such offerings were now no more.
Is it so, that superstition yet delights itself in the blood of murdered
men?'

'It is just so,' I was obliged to reply. 'With a people naturally more
gentle and humane than we of Rome this custom would long ago have fallen
into disuse. They would have easily found a way, as all people do, to
conform their religious doctrine and offerings to their feelings and
instincts. But the Romans, by nature and long training, lovers of blood,
their country built upon the ruins of others, and cemented with
blood--the taste for it is not easily eradicated. There are temples
where human sacrifices have never ceased. Laws have restrained their
frequency--have forbidden them, under heaviest penalties, unless
permitted by the state--but these laws ever have been, and are now
evaded; and it is the settled purpose of Fronto, and others of his
stamp, to restore to them their lost honors, and make them again, as
they used to be, the chief rite in the worship of the gods. I am not
sorry, Julia, that your doubts, though so painfully, have yet been so
effectually, removed.'

Julia had for some time blamed, as over-ardent, the zeal of the
Christians. She had thought that the evil of the existing superstitions
was over-estimated, and that it were wiser to pursue a course of more
moderation; that a system that nourished such virtues as she found in
Portia, in Tacitus, and others like them, could not be so corrupting in
its power as the Christians were in the habit of representing it; that
if we could succeed in substituting Christianity quietly, without
alienating the affections, or shocking too violently the prejudices, of
the believers in the prevailing superstitions, our gain would be double.
To this mode of arguing I knew she was impelled, by her love and almost
reverence for Portia; and how could I blame it, springing from such a
cause? I had, almost criminally, allowed her to blind herself in a way
she never would have done, had h