Phemius

“ How could a Judæan peasant be, as you say Jesus was, divine?’
‘Self-sacrifice for the sake of others is always divine,’ said Pomponia. ‘Even in Greek mythology the gods assume the likeness of men in order to help and deliver them. Does not the poet tell us how Apollo once kept, as a slave, the oxen of Admetus? how Hercules was the servant of Eurystheus? how Jupiter came to visit Baucis and Philemon? Is it so strange that the God of all should reveal Himself to man as man? ”

“ In the mind of the latter Phoebus is not merely an archer, not merely a prophet and a singer, but the entire manifestation of genius. He is inspiration; he radiates poetry, music, eloquence from his sublime figure. The Phidian Jupiter is lost to us, except in copies, but in the Belvedere Apollo we see how the sculptor could interpret the highest thought of the Hellenic mind. He who visits this statue by night in the Vatican Palace at Rome, seeing it by torchlight, has, perhaps, the most wonderful impression left on his imagination which art can give. ”

“ What can he know of philosophy?’
‘Pardon me, dear friend,’ replied Pomponia, ‘he knows a philosophy far diviner than that of the Porch, far nobler than that of the Garden or the Lyceum. It is a philosophy which may not puff up the pride of intellect, but can sway the motives of the life. You may perhaps find in Rome—though I doubt it—ten philosophers who live purely and simply, but I could find you many hundreds of Christians.’
‘Men of the common herd,’ he said, in a tone of some disdain. ”

“ The pretty inscription wherewith the Athenians honoured the entry of Pompey into their city is conformable to my sense: "By so much thou art a god, as thou confessest thee a man." 'Tis an absolute and, as it were, a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. ”

“ Zethus and Amphion, the inventors of music, lived about the age of Cadmus. And should one assert that Phemonoe was the first who sang oracles in verse to Acrisius, let him know that twenty-seven years after Phemonoe, lived Orpheus, and Musæus, and Linus the teacher of Hercules. And Homer and Hesiod are much more recent than the Trojan war; and after them the legislators among the Greeks are far more recent, Lycurgus and Solon, and the seven wise men, and Pherecydes of Syros, and Pythagoras the great, who lived later, about the Olympiads, as we have shown. ”

“ Than thou to draw the horoscope of Thebes?
Are not my teachers surer guides than thine—
Great Phoebus and the sire of Phoebus, Zeus?
Thou art a messenger suborned, thy tongue
Is sharper than a sword's edge, yet thy speech
Will bring thee more defeats than victories. ”

“ But many of us mortals err in heart,
And set up, for a solace in our woes,
Images of the gods in stone and brass,
Or figures carved in gold or ivory;
And, furnishing for these, our handiworks,
Both sacrifice and rite magnificent,
We think that thus we do a pious work.”
And Philemon also, who published many explanations of ancient customs, shares in the knowledge of the truth; and thus he writes:—
“Tell me what thoughts of God we should conceive?
One, all things seeing, yet Himself unseen.” ”

“ At last, upon a time when Pompey was present at the hearing of a certain cause, Clodius, accompanied with a crowd of profligate and impudent ruffians, standing up in a place above the rest, put questions to the populace as follows: "Who is the dissolute general? who is the man that seeks another man? who scratches his head with one finger?" and the rabble, upon the signal of his shaking his gown, with a great shout to every question, like singers making responses in a chorus, made answer, "Pompey." ”

“ The Romans would adore you, as the vindicator and defender of their liberty, and would look upon this kingdom, as the only temple which has afforded sanctuary to, and preserved their idol. Other nations will applaud your generous gratitude, and seeing how faithfully you have behaved to your benefactor, there is no prince whatever, who will not be ready and desirous to render you his services. What you may expect from Pompey, is not in my power to express, nor in my imagination to conceive. ”

“ Nay, the human mind can penetrate far beyond the sun. There is no relation, therefore, between the faculties of man and the scale in creation of the planet which he inhabits.”
“I was glad to hear you assert the other night the spiritual nature of man in opposition to Mr. Phoebus.”
“Ah! Mr. Phoebus!” said the stranger, with a smile. “He is an old acquaintance of mine. And I must say he is very consistent—except in paying a visit to Jerusalem. That does surprise me. He said to me the other night the same things as he said to me at Rome many years ago. He would revive the worship of Nature. ”

“ And here follows one of the passages in the dialogue which, as expressing the pantheistic conception of the universe, gave occasion to the quarrel of the philosophers, to be presently noted. "Thou standest alone," is the comment of Epimetheus on the claim to independent self-subsistence asserted by Prometheus; "thou standest alone; thy self-will fails to appreciate the bliss of the gods—thou, thine, the world and heaven, all feel themselves one intimate whole." Repelled like Mercury, Epimetheus departs, and Minerva, in whom Prometheus acknowledges his sole inspirer and instructress, appears. ”

“ So they bade Prometheus and Epimetheus fashion a being which should be like and yet unlike themselves. There was nothing but clay out of which to make this new creature called man, but the brothers spent much time over their task, and, when it was finished, Jupiter saw that the work was good, for they had given to man all the qualities that the gods themselves possessed—youth, beauty, health, strength,—everything but immortality. ”

“ The notorious colloguing and eagerness of Libo and Hypsæus, and the earnestness displayed by Pompey's intimates, have produced an impression that Pompey desires it; and those who don't want him to have it are at the same time annoyed with your having put power into his hands. ”

“ In the time of Pompey, the senator Nigidius Figulus, who was an ardent occultist, expounded the barbarian uranography in Latin. But the scholar whose authority contributed most to the final acceptance of sidereal divination was a Syrian philosopher of encyclopedic knowledge, Posidonius of Apamea, the teacher of Cicero. ”

“ For once, Philip had not invoked Prometheus, and now, in revenge, Epimetheus opened his box and sent forth a thousand disquieting considerations. But it is always so—whether we act with forethought or without. Epimetheus is never napping. He is sure to open his box when an act is beyond recall. ”

“ By dishonest means the elder Pompey had come to a great estate, from a low condition; and the son sought to hide, in the abundance of his means, the meanness of his origin. He became proud and upstart, evincing a predilection for aristocracy, which often animates those of lofty talent and low birth; who frequently affect the littlenesses of the nominally great, instead of showing that true greatness can exist among the so-called little. ”

“ I have not therefore the least tempting inducement to envy the more seeming state and splendour of the other gods, who are worshipped at set times and places; as Phoebus at Rhodes, Venus in her Cyprian isle, Juno in the city Argos, Minerva at Athens, Jupiter on the hill Olympus, Neptune at Tarentum, and Priapus in the town of Lampsacum; while my worship extending as far as my influence, the whole world is my one altar, whereon the most valuable incense and sacrifice is perpetually offered up. ”

“ But my path I leave to fate or god; if there be any god that looks after these things. Please have a look at my garden path and my Spartan bath and the other things which are in Cyrus’ province, when you can, and urge Philotimus to make haste, so that I may have something in that line to match yours. Pompey came to his place at Cumae on the Parilia: and at once sent a man to me with his compliments. ”

“ Is not that panegyric enough for any man? Because he was so strong, so fearless, so pure, so gifted with great might to love, so keen to see Pompilia was pure as a babe's dreams, and the light on his forehead falls from the lattices overhead—the lattices of heaven—we love him. Had his figure been fully drawn we should have had a gentleman. ”

“ But when he sees the friends by whom Pompey is surrounded he knows, as all others know, that the affair is in truth going just as he would not have it.8 We feel as we read these letters, in which Pompey's name is continually before us, how much Pompey prevailed by his personal appearance, by his power of saying gracious things, and then again by his power of holding his tongue. "You know the slowness of the man," he says to Lentulus, "and his silence."9 A slow, cautious, hypocritical man, who knew well how to use the allurements of personal manners! ”

“ With regard to virtue and vice, the instances of the one of them having been mistaken by the public for the other in particular people, are so numerous, that history stumbles upon them, at almost every step; nothing can illustrate this more [Pg 12] evidently, than the greatest impostors the world has produced, having passed for repositories of the secrets of heaven. Numa Pompilius, introduced among the Romans, whatever policy and religion he thought fit, by means of the fiction, that all he proposed was dictated to him by the nymph Egeria. ”

“ The gallant Cnæus Pompeius won for himself the surname of Magnus, and made sufficient impression on the world to have his name adapted to modern pronunciation by the Pompée of the French, and the English Pompey. When a little negro boy was the favourite appendage of fine ladies of the early seventeenth century, the habit of calling slaves by classical titles, made Pompey the usual designation of these poor little fellows ”

“ The Romans submitted to the pretensions of a race which they despised. Their epic poet, while he claimed for them pre-eminence in the arts of government and war, acknowledged their inferiority in taste, eloquence, and science. Men of letters affected to understand the Greek language better than their own. Pomponius preferred the honour of becoming an Athenian, by intellectual naturalisation, to all the distinctions which were to be acquired in the political contests of Rome. His great friend composed Greek poems and memoirs. ”

“ For who of the faithful ones in the Church, and who of those who have obtained a knowledge of true doctrine, does not know that Eusebius Pamphili has given himself over to false ways of thinking, and has become of the same opinion and of the same mind with those who follow after the opinions of Arius? In all his historical books he calls the Son and Word of God a creature, a servant, and to be adored as second in rank. ”

“ Down from the holy mountain they went, all those new creatures, ready to make them homes and to go about human work. For they were strong to endure, fresh and hardy of spirit, as men and women should be who are true children of our Mother Earth.
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.
When gods and shepherds piped and the stars sang, that was the day of musicians! But the triumph of Phoebus Apollo himself was not so wonderful as the triumph of a mortal man who lived on earth, though some say that he came of divine lineage. ”

“ HOW I ACCOMPANIED PHILEMON TO PERGAMUS.
On the morrow Artemidorus came again and would have dissuaded Philemon from going to Pergamus, maintaining more fully than before that he had spoken with many to whom the god had revealed prescriptions and that there was nothing divine in them: “for to some,” said he,45 “being of a melancholy temperament the god prescribes the hearing of odes, hymns and other music, or sometimes even farces; to others riding on horses; to others bathing in cold water; to others walking or leaping; to others frequent rubbing and careful diet ”

“ But to me Pompey seems to have acted without sufficient reason; for there is a certain impetuosity of spirit and an alacrity implanted by nature in the hearts of all men, which is inflamed by a desire to meet the foe. ”

“ This man coming into Philemon’s chamber questioned him concerning his condition and symptoms, and the sacrifices he had offered, and the gods he had propitiated. Then he spoke concerning himself and his own deliverance, how after he had been sick nearly twenty years, he had been healed by Asclepius at the famous temple in Pergamus; and he very earnestly exhorted Philemon to go thither with all speed. At the same time he described the wonders wrought by the god on those that believed in him, and the punishment he had inflicted on the impious and unbelieving. ”

“ The apostle's thanksgiving and prayer for Philemon are here set forth by the object, circumstance, and matter of them, with the way whereby much of the knowledge of Philemon's goodness came to him.
1. Here is the object of Paul's praises and prayers for Philemon: I thank my God, making mention of thee in my prayers, v. 4. Observe, (1.) God is the author of all the good that is in any, or that is done by them. ”

“ There are repeated and warmly eulogistic references to Pamphilus in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. Thus he speaks of him as that holy martyr of our day; [5] and as that most eloquent man, and that philosopher truly such in his life; [6] and again, as that most admirable man of our times, that glory of the church of Cæsareia. [7] He devotes the eleventh chapter of the eighth book also to a notice of Pamphilus and other martyrs. ”

“ The heart of Pomponia was open to every kind impulse, and as there was little difficulty in finding room for another slave in the ample palace of a Roman noble like Aulus Plautius, Onesimus, saved once more from ruin and destitution, slept that night in the cell of a new master. ”