Bessas chuckles: 'Have no fear, old beard. He is my host, and the wine is good, and this is excellent lamb. We barbarians can afford to let the Romans complain a little of our successes. I do not understand one-quarter of his jargon; but that he is complaining, that much at least I understand.'
Modestus goes on, inconscqucntly, to point the close resemblance – has Malthus noted it? – between this villa and the favourite villa of the celebrated author, Pliny.' The entrance hall, plain but not mean, leading to a D-shaped portico with the same glazed windows and overhanging caves as Pliny's, thence to the inner hall and the dining-room with windows and folding doors on three sides. The same view of wooded hills to the south-cast; but south-west, instead of the view to the sea which Pliny had – in rough weather the breakers used to drive up to the very dining-room, which must have been both alarming and inconvenient – the river valley of Hebrus, and the fertile Thracian plain beloved of the drunken devotees of the Wine-God, who ran with their breasts uncovered, their loose hair speed-tossed, and carrying in their passionate hands wands ivy-wrcathcd and tipped with pine-cones – why, observe, there they are so in the frieze just above the window; beloved also of Orpheus, pictured with his lute, who made rocks dance that should have stood still, and waters stand still that should have danced – the waters of the very River Hebrus that rolls yonder. Such stilling of waters was a feat that no other man has ever performed before or since…'
'Who divided the Red Sea?' Simeon breaks in, indignantly. 'Or who in later times passed dry-shod over Jordan? As for dancing rocks, does not David the psalmist write: "Why hop ye so, ye high lulls?" lurpriscd at the power of his own sacred melody?'
'The Thracian plain,' resumes Modestus with a grimace of contempt, 'first bloodlessly annexed to Rome by that scholarly Emperor who conquered foggy Britain and added Morocco to the Empire – Claudius, his name – ah, you Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Eastern half of our Empire, you mixed multitude, do not forget that it was we Romans, not half-breed Greeks, who first won for you the dominions in which you now boast yourselves – it was our native-born Mummius, Paullus, Pompey, Agrippa, Titus, Trajan…'
'A most unselfish set of gentlemen, I am sure,' puts in the burgess Milo, a Thracian, drily; and he, too, feels it his duty to propitiate Bessas, muttering something behind his hand.
'Drink up. Sir!' orders Malthus. 'A new round of wine is about to begin. Let us all pledge the name of Rome, our common mother!'
Simeon agrees recklessly: 'I am ready, Schoolmaster. That wine which was poured during the marriage-feast at Cana of Galilee would not yield in quantity and quality to this; and as for these fish-cakes, why, the miraculous draught of fishes itself could never
…'
So unpleasantness is once more avoided, but Modestus cannot resist continuing on the topic of the unconquerable Roman soldiery. 'Now tell me, my learned friends at that end of the table, and my gallant friends at this- what was the secret of the Roman soldiers' unexampled success? Tell me that! Why did they win battle after battle in Southern sands, in Northern snows, or against the painted Briton and the gilded Persian? Why was it that Rome, the capital of the world, had no need of walls and that almost the only fortresses in the whole Empire were block-houses on the remote frontiers? Why? Let me tell you, my gallant and learned friends. There were three reasons. The first: these Romans trusted to their own visible tutelary gods, the golden Eagles of their legions, who guarded them and whom they themselves guarded, and to no hypothetic divinity in Heaven above the clouds. The second: they trusted to their own powerful right arms for hurling missiles – sharp javelins – not to the adventitious bowstring; and in these right arms wielded the short, stabbing sword, the weapon of the courageous, civilized man, not the cowardly lance or the hurtling, barbaric battle-axe. The third: they trusted to their own steadfast legs, not to the timorous legs of horses.'
'Ho, ho, ho,' laughs Bessas. 'My worthy host, Distinguished Lord Modestus, will you forgive my frankness if I tell you that you are talking a great deal of nonsense? I shall leave the more religious-minded of the company to dispute your account of the power of the Eagles as gods, which I certainly think, though I am not an expert in such matters, is not only blasphemous but an exaggeration of fact; but I will take you up most strongly on the other points. In the first place, I understand you to despise the bow as a weapon of no account…
