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In the year 407, twelve years after the events above narrated, Ulpius entered the city of Rome. He had not advanced far, before the gaiety and confusion in the streets appeared completely to bewilder him. He hastened to the nearest public garden that he could perceive, and avoiding the frequented paths, flung himself down, apparently fainting with exhaustion, at the foot of a tree.
And now, to the astonishment of priests and congregations, the silent, thoughtful, solitary Ulpius suddenly started from his long repose, and stood forth the fiery advocate of the rights of his invaded worship. In a few days the fame of his addresses to the Pagans who still attended the rites of Serapis spread throughout the whole city.
Even the globe of Euphrosynus Ulpius, a name otherwise unknown, is represented to have been constructed for Marcellus, who had been archbishop of Florence. They are all the testimony of Florence in her own behalf.
The names of several other jurists are preserved. They were divided into two classes, the practicians, who pleaded or responded, and the regularly endowed professors of jurisprudence. Of the former class SEX. JULIUS AFRICANUS was the most celebrated for his acute intellect and the extreme difficulty of his definitions; ULPIUS MARCELLUS for his deep learning and the prudence of his decisions.
He died at the age of thirty-seven, in the twenty-first year of our era, after being for twelve years the leader and champion of Germany. By J. S. REID, Litt.D. The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Marcus Ulpius Traianus, the fourteenth emperor.
The populace were driven from the ramparts, and the fortifications of the great city echoed to no sound now but the tramp of the restless sentinel, or the clash of arms from the distant guard-houses that dotted the long line of the lofty walls. It was then that Ulpius, passing cautiously along the least-frequented streets, gained unnoticed the place of his destination.
As he spoke, the Christian knelt at the Pagan's feet. It was terrible to see the man of affection and integrity thus humbled before the man of heartlessness and crime. Ulpius turned to behold him, then without a word he raised him from the ground, and thrusting him to the window, pointed with flashing eyes to the wide view without.
On hearing this rumour, Ulpius immediately joined the few who attended the new orator's discourses, and there heard enough to convince him that he listened to the most determined zealot for Christianity in the city of Rome.
'Roar and mutter, and make your hurricane music in my ears! exclaimed the Pagan, raising his withered hands, and addressing in a savage ecstacy his imagined deities. 'Your servant Ulpius stops not on the journey that leads him to your repeopled shrines! Blood, crime, danger, pain pride and honour, joy and rest, have I strewn like sacrifices at your altars' feet!
The preceding events, though some space has been occupied in describing them, passed in so short a period of time, that he had not hitherto recovered from the first overwhelming shock of the meeting with Ulpius. But now, awed though he still was, he felt that the moment of the struggle for freedom had arrived.
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