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As for dilettante production at Rome itself Pliny remarks in one letter: "This year has produced a large crop of poets: there was scarcely a day in the whole month of April on which some one did not give a reading."
For, although we should lay aside the authority of our own books entirely, yet when Tacitus, who wrote not twenty, perhaps not ten, years after Josephus, in his account of a period in which Josephus was nearly thirty years of age, tells us, that a vast multitude of Christians were condemned at Rome; that they derived their denomination from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death, as a criminal, by the procurator, Pontius Pilate; that the superstition had spread not only over Judea, the source of the evil but it had reached Rome also: when Suetonius, an historian contemporary with Tacitus, relates that, in the time of Claudius, the Jews were making disturbances at Rome, Christus being their leader: and that, during the reign of Nero, the Christians were punished; under both which emperors Josephus lived: when Pliny, who wrote his celebrated epistle not more than thirty years after the publication of Josephus's history, found the Christians in such numbers in the province of Bithynia as to draw from him a complaint that the contagion had seized cities, towns, and villages, and had so seized them as to produce a general desertion of the public rites; and when, as has already been observed, there is no reason for imagining that the Christians were more numerous in Bithynia than in many other parts of the Roman empire; it cannot, I should suppose, after this, be believed, that the religion, and the transaction upon which it was founded, were too obscure to engage the attention of Josephus, or to obtain a place in his history.
This opinion is maintained by Mr. Horneman, Mr. Grey Jackson, and several other modern travellers; and it is slightly sanctioned by Strabo and Pliny, who speak of the sources of the Nile as being reported by some to be in the farther parts of Mauritania.
"Here they both come," cried Maud, glad to find the discourse taking so complete a change; "and there is mamma, followed by Pliny, to tell Beulah to take her station at the coffee, while I go to the chocolate, leaving the tea to the only hand that can make it so that my father will drink it."
He whose eye can only measure the space occupied by the voluminous labours of the elder Pliny, of a Mazzuchelli, a Muratori, a Montfaucon, and a Gough, all men who laboured from the love of labour, and can see nothing in that space but the industry which filled it, is like him who only views a city at a distance the streets and the edifices, and all the life and population within, he can never know.
According to Pliny, it was the common opinion in his time, that the group was made of one stone by three sculptors, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenadorus, all three natives of Rhodes, and the two last probably sons of the former. He says, "The Laocoön, which is in the palace of the Emperor Titus, is a work to be preferred to all others, either in painting or sculpture.
In this enquiry it may be convenient to begin with the mistletoe, the instrument of Balder's death. From time immemorial the mistletoe has been the object of superstitious veneration in Europe. It was worshipped by the Druids, as we learn from a famous passage of Pliny.
"Never'll gain strength in this way ought to have begun tonics three weeks ago. Well, we'll do what we can to repair the mischief. Port wine is as good as anything to begin on. You may order a bottle brought up, if you please." As Mr. Hastings rang the bell and gave the order, Pliny stole a glance of mingled entreaty and dismay at Theodore and Dr. Vincent.
True, we saw two or three vagabonds mending their nets, but never trying to catch any thing with them. We did not go to the ancient warm baths two miles below Tiberias. I had no desire in the world to go there. This seemed a little strange, and prompted me to try to discover what the cause of this unreasonable indifference was. It turned out to be simply because Pliny mentions them.
I had been down at the depot to see if my freight had come, and arrived on the scene just after the accident occurred. I had just brains enough left to have both gentlemen taken to the hotel and come for you." Arrived at the Euclid House the two young men went up the steps and through the halls so familiar to both of them, and sought at once the room where Pliny had been placed.
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