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Updated: June 4, 2025
“Well, I wish to get out, if I could, most learned Polemo,” said Callista sadly. “May Polemo of Rhodes speak frankly to Callista of Proconnesus?” asked Polemo. “I would not speak to every one. If so, let me ask, what keeps you here?” “The magistrates of Sicca and this iron chain,” answered Callista. “I would I could be elsewhere; I would I were not what I am.”
So I thought old mother might do something for me; and I asked her for a charm or love potion, which would bring her from her brother down to the forest yonder. Gurta took to it kindly, for she has a mortal hatred of Callista, because of her good looks, though she won’t say so, and because she’s a Greek! and she liked the notion of humbling the haughty minx.
He wished Callista no harm, but, if a Christian must be found and held up in terrorem, he would rather it was a person like her, without connections and home, than the member of any decent family of Sicca, whose fair fame would be compromised by a catastrophe.
The beasts of the wild are roaming and roaring at a distance, or nigh at hand: not any one of them presumes to touch her. No vultures may promise themselves a morning meal from such a victim, as they watch through the night upon the high crags which overlook her. The stars have come out on high, and, they too look down upon Callista, as if they were funeral lights in her honour.
“The strong arm of the law,” he said, “should not, on the other hand, be put forth against such butterflies as this Callista, a girl who, he knew from her brother, had not yet seen eighteen summers. What harm could such a poor helpless thing possibly do? She could not even defend herself, much less attack anybody else.
Here another thought took possession of him, which had as yet but crossed his mind, and it made him colour up with confusion and terror. “They were laying a plot for me,” he said, “my uncle and Aristo; and it is Callista who has defeated it.” And as he spoke, he felt how much he owed to her, and how dangerous too it was to think of his debt.
It was Agellius’s place, as the younger, to make advances, if he could, to an adjustment of the misunderstanding; and he wished to find some middle way. And, also, it is evident he had another inducement besides his tenderness to Jucundus to urge him to do so. In truth, Callista exerted a tremendous sway over him.
There were those, however, whom Callista could understand, and who could understand her; there were those who, while Aristo, Cornelius, Jucundus, and Polemo were moving in her behalf, were interesting themselves also in her, and in a more effectual way. Agellius had joined Cæcilius, and, if in no other way, by his mouth came to the latter and his companions the news of her imprisonment.
“If, on the other hand,” continued Cæcilius, not noticing her interruption, “if all your thoughts go one way; if you have needs, desires, aims, aspirations, all of which demand an Object, and imply, by their very existence, that such an Object does exist also; and if nothing here does satisfy them, and if there be a message which professes to come from that Object, of whom you already have the presentiment, and to teach you about Him, and to bring the remedy you crave; and if those who try that remedy say with one voice that the remedy answers; are you not bound, Callista, at least to look that way, to inquire into what you hear about it, and to ask for His help, if He be, to enable you to believe in Him?”
The rest of his plan the tribune kept to himself, nor did Septimius wish to know it. He intended to march a guard into the prison shortly before Callista was brought out for execution, and then to make it believed that she had died under the horrors of the Barathrum.
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