Azel Ames - "The Mayflower and Her Log, v6"

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Lucian of Samosata - "Works, V3"

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Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Antonina

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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. The boldest
among the Christians, as they passed the temple walls, involuntarily
trembled when they heard the vehemence of the applause which arose from
the audience of the inspired priest. Addressed to all varieties of age
and character, these harangues woke an echo in every breast they
reached. To the young they were clothed in all the poetry of the
worship for which they pleaded. They dwelt on the altars of Venus that
the Christians would lay waste; on the woodlands that the Christians
would disenchant of their Dryads; on the hallowed Arts that the
Christians would arise and destroy. To the aged they called up
remembrances of the glories of the past achieved through the favour of
the gods; of ancestors who had died in their service; of old forgotten
loves, and joys, and successes that had grown and prospered under the
gentle guardianship of the deities of old--while the unvarying burden of
their conclusion to all was the reiterated assertion that the
illustrious Macrinus had died a victim to the toleration of the
Christian sect.


But the efforts of Ulpius were not confined to the delivery of orations.
Every moment of his leisure time was dedicated to secret pilgrimages
into Alexandria. Careless of peril, regardless of threats, the
undaunted enthusiast penetrated into the most private meeting-places of
the Christians; reclaiming on every side apostates to the Pagan creed,
and defying the hostility of half the city from the stronghold of the
temple walls. Day after day fresh recruits arrived to swell the ranks
of the worshippers of Serapis. The few members of the scattered
congregations of the provinces who still remained faithful to the
ancient worship were gathered together in Alexandria by the private
messengers of the unwearied Ulpius. Already tumults began to take place
between the Pagans and the Christians; and even now the priest of
Serapis prepared to address a protest to the new Emperor in behalf of
the ancient religion of the land. At this moment it seemed probable
that the heroic attempts of one man to prop the structure of
superstition, whose foundations were undermined throughout, and whose
walls were attacked by brigands, might actually be crowned with success.

But Time rolled on; and with him came inexorable change, trampling over
the little barriers set up against it by human opposition, and erecting
its strange and transitory fabrics triumphantly in their stead. In vain
did the devoted priest exert all his powers to augment and combine his
scattered band; in vain did the mighty temple display its ancient
majesty, its gorgeous sacrifices, its mysterious auguries. The spirit
of Christianity was forth for triumph on the earth--the last destinies
of Paganism were fast accomplishing. Yet a few seasons more of
unavailing resistance passed by, and then the Archbishop of Alexandria
issued his decree that the Temple of Serapis should be destroyed.

At the rumour of their Primate's determination, the Christian fanatics
rose by swarms from every corner of Egypt, and hurried into Alexandria
to be present at the work of demolition. From the arid solitudes of the
desert, from their convents on rocks and their caverns in the earth,
hosts of rejoicing monks flew to the city gates, and ranged themselves
with the soldiery and the citizens, impatient for the assault. At the
dawn of morning this assembly of destroyers was convened, and as the sun
rose over Alexandria they arrived before the temple walls.

The gates of the glorious structure were barred; the walls were crowded
with their Pagan defenders. A still, dead, mysterious silence reigned
over the whole edifice; and, of all the men who thronged it, one only
moved from his appointed place--one only wandered incessantly from point
to point, wherever the building was open to assault. Those among the
besiegers who were nearest the temple saw in this presiding genius of
the preparations for defence the object at once of their most malignant
hatred and their most ungovernable dread--Ulpius the priest.

As soon as the Archbishop gave the signal for the assault, a band of
monks--their harsh, discordant voices screaming fragments of psalms,
their tattered garments waving in the air, their cadaverous faces
gleaming with ferocious joy--led the way, placed the first ladders
against the walls, and began the attack. From all sides the temple was
assailed by the infuriated besiegers, and on all sides it was
successfully defended by the resolute besieged. Shock after shock fell
upon the massive gates without forcing them to recede; missile after
missile was hurled at the building, but no breach was made in its solid
surface. Multitudes scaled the walls, gained the outer porticoes, and
slaughtered their Pagan defenders, but were incessantly repulsed in
their turn ere they could make their advantage good. Over and over
again did the assailants seem on the point of storming the temple
successfully, but the figure of Ulpius, invariably appearing at the
critical moment among his disheartened followers, acted like a fatality
in destroying the effect of the most daring exertions and the most
important triumphs. Wherever there was danger, wherever there was
carnage, wherever there was despair, thither strode the undaunted
priest, inspiring the bold, succouring the wounded, reanimating the
feeble. Blinded by no stratagem, wearied by no fatigue, there was
something almost demoniac in his activity for destruction, in his
determination under defeat. The besiegers marked his course round the
temple by the calamities that befell them at his every step. If the
bodies of slaughtered Christians were flung down upon them from the
walls, they felt that Ulpius was there. If the bravest of the soldiery
hesitated at mounting the ladders, it was known that Ulpius was
directing the defeat of their comrades above. If a sally from the
temple drove back the advanced guard upon the reserves in the rear, it
was pleaded as their excuse that Ulpius was fighting at the head of his
Pagan bands. Crowd on crowd of Christian warriors still pressed forward
to the attack; but though the ranks of the unbelievers were perceptibly
thinned, though the gates that defended them at last began to quiver
before the reiterated blows by which they were assailed, every court of
the sacred edifice yet remained in the possession of the besieged, and
was at the disposal of the unconquered captain who organised the
defence.


Depressed by the failure of his efforts, and horrified at the carnage
already perpetrated among his adherents, the Archbishop suddenly
commanded a cessation of hostilities, and proposed to the defenders of
the temple a short and favourable truce. After some delay, and
apparently at the expense of some discord among their ranks, the Pagans
sent to the Primate an assurance of their acceptance of his terms, which
were that both parties should abstain from any further struggle for the
ascendancy until an edict from Theodosius determining the ultimate fate
of the temple should be applied for and obtained.

The truce once agreed on, the wide space before the respited edifice was
gradually cleared of its occupants. Slowly and sadly the Archbishop and
his followers departed from the ancient walls whose summits they had
assaulted in vain; and when the sun went down, of the great multitude
congregated in the morning a few corpses were all that remained. Within
the sacred building, Death and Repose ruled with the night, where
morning had brightly glittered on Life and Action. The wounded, the
wearied, and the cold, all now lay hushed alike, fanned by the night
breezes that wandered through the lofty porticoes, or soothed by the
obscurity that reigned over the silent halls. Among the ranks of the
Pagan devotees but one man still toiled and thought. Round and round
the temple, restless as a wild beast that is threatened in his lair,
watchful as a lonely spirit in a city of strange tombs, wandered the
solitary and brooding Ulpius. For him there was no rest of body--no
tranquility of mind. On the events of the next few days hovered the
fearful chance that was soon, either for misery or happiness, to
influence irretrievably the years of his future life. Round and round
the mighty walls he watched with mechanical and useless anxiety. Every
stone in the building was eloquent to his lonely heart--beautiful to his
wild imagination. On those barren structures stretched for him the loved
and fertile home; there was the shrine for whose glory his intellect had
been enslaved, for whose honour his youth had been sacrificed! Round and
round the secret recesses and sacred courts he paced with hurried
footstep, cleansing with gentle and industrious hand the stains of blood
and the defilements of warfare from the statues at his side. Sad,
solitary, thoughtful, as in the first days of his apprenticeship to the
gods, he now roved in the same moonlit recesses where Macrinus had
taught him in his youth. As the menacing tumults of the day had aroused
his fierceness, so the stillness of the quiet night awakened his
gentleness. He had combated for the temple in the morning as a son for
a parent, and he now watched over it at night as a miser over his
treasure, as a lover over his mistress, as a mother over her child!

The days passed on; and at length the memorable morning arrived which
was to determine the fate of the last temple that Christian fanaticism
had spared to the admiration of the world. At an early hour of the
morning the diminished numbers of the Pagan zealots met their reinforced
and determined opponents--both sides being alike unarmed--in the great
square of Alexandria. The imperial prescript was then publicly read.
It began by assuring the Pagans that their priest's plea for protection
for the temple had received the same consideration which had been
bestowed on the petition against the gods presented by the Christian
Archbishop, and ended by proclaiming the commands of the Emperor that
Serapis and all other idols in Alexandria should immediately be
destroyed.

The shout of triumph which followed the conclusion of the imperial edict
still rose from the Christian ranks when the advanced guard of the
soldiers appointed to ensure the execution of the Emperor's designs
appeared in the square. For a few minutes the forsaken Pagans stood
rooted to the spot where they had assembled, gazing at the warlike
preparations around them in a stupor of bewilderment and despair. Then
as they recollected how diminished were their numbers, how arduous had
been their first defence against a few, and how impossible would be a
second defence against many--from the boldest to the feeblest, a panic
seized on them; and, regardless of Ulpius, regardless of honour,
regardless of the gods, they turned with one accord and fled from the
place.


With the flight of the Pagans the work of demolition began. Even women
and children hurried to join in the welcome task of indiscriminate
destruction. No defenders on this occasion barred the gates of the
temple to the Christian hosts. The sublime solitude of the tenantless
building was outraged and invaded in an instant. Statues were broken,
gold was carried off, doors were splintered into fragments; but here for
a while the progress of demolition was delayed. Those to whom the
labour of ruining the outward structure had been confided were less
successful than their neighbours who had pillaged its contents. The
ponderous stones of the pillars, the massive surfaces of the walls,
resisted the most vigorous of their puny efforts, and forced them to
remain contented with mutilating that which they could not destroy--with
tearing off roofs, defacing marbles, and demolishing capitals. The rest
of the buildings remained uninjured, and grander even now in the
wildness of ruin than ever it had been in the stateliness of perfection
and strength.

But the most important achievement still remained, the death-wound of
Paganism was yet to be struck--the idol Serapis, which had ruled the
hearts of millions, and was renowned in the remotest corners of the
Empire, was to be destroyed! A breathless silence pervaded the
Christian ranks as they filled the hall of the god. A superstitious
dread, to which they had hitherto thought themselves superior, overcame
their hearts, as a single soldier, bolder than his fellows, mounted by a
ladder to the head of the colossal statue, and struck at its cheek with
an axe. The blow had scarcely been dealt when a deep groan was heard
from the opposite wall of the apartment, succeeded by a noise of
retreating footsteps, and then all was silent again. For a few minutes
this incident stayed the feet of those who were about to join their
companion in the mutilation of the idol; but after an interval their
hesitation vanished, they dealt blow after blow at the statue, and no
more groans followed--no more sounds were heard, save the wild echoes of
the stroke of hammer, crowbar, and club, resounding through the lofty
hall. In an incredibly short space of time the image of Serapis lay in
great fragments on the marble floor. The multitude seized on the limbs
of the idol and ran forth to drag them in triumph through the streets.
Yet a few minutes more, and the ruins were untenanted, the temple was
silent--Paganism was destroyed!

Throughout the ravaging course of the Christians over the temple, they
had been followed with dogged perseverance, and at the same time with
the most perfect impunity, by the only Pagan of all his brethren who had
not sought safety by flight. This man, being acquainted with every
private passage and staircase in the sacred building, was enabled to be
secretly present at each fresh act of demolition, in whatever part of
the edifice it might be perpetrated. From hall to hall, and from room
to room, he tracked with noiseless step and glaring eye the movements of
the Christian mob--now hiding himself behind a pillar, now passing into
concealed cavities in the walls, now looking down from imperceptible
fissures in the roof; but, whatever his situation, invariably watching
from it, with the same industry of attention and the same silence of
emotion, the minutest acts of spoliation committed by the most humble
follower of the Christian ranks. It was only when he entered with the
victorious ravagers into the vast apartment occupied by the idol Serapis
that the man's countenance began to give evidence of the agony under
which his heart was writhing within him. He mounted a private staircase
cut in the hollow of the massive wall of the room, and gaining a passage
that ran round the extremities of the ceiling, looked through a sort of
lattice concealed in the ornaments of the cornice. As he gazed down and
saw the soldier mounting, axe in hand, to the idol's head, great drops
of perspiration trickled from his forehead. His hot, thick breath
hissed through his closed teeth, and his hands strained at the strong
metal supports of the lattice until they bent beneath his grasp. When
the stroke descended on the image, he closed his eyes. When the
fragment detached by the blow fell on the floor, a groan burst from his
quivering lips. For one moment more he glared down with a gaze of
horror upon the multitude at his feet, and then with frantic speed he
descended the steep stairs by which he had mounted to the roof, and fled
from the temple.


The same night this man was again seen by some shepherds whom curiosity
led to visit the desecrated building, weeping bitterly in its ruined and
deserted porticoes. As they approached to address him, he raised his
head, and with a supplicating action signed to them to leave the place.
For the few moments during which he confronted them, the moonlight shone
full upon his countenance, and the shepherds, who had in former days
attended the ceremonies of the temple, saw with astonishment that the
solitary mourner whose meditations they had disturbed was no other than
Ulpius the priest.

At the dawn of day these shepherds had again occasion to pass the walls
of the pillaged temple. Throughout the hours of the night the
remembrance of the scene of unsolaced, unpartaken grief that they had
beheld--of the awful loneliness of misery in which they had seen the
heart-broken and forsaken man, whose lightest words they had once
delighted to revere--inspired them with a feeling of pity for the
deserted Pagan, widely at variance with the spirit of persecution which
the spurious Christianity of their day would fain have instilled in the
bosoms of its humblest votaries. Bent on consolation, anxious to afford
help, these men, like the Samaritan of old, went up at their own peril
to succour a brother in affliction. They searched every portion of the
empty building, but the object of their sympathy was nowhere to be seen.
They called, but heard no answering sound, save the dirging of the winds
of early morning through the ruined halls, which but a short time since
had resounded with the eloquence of the once illustrious priest. Except
a few night-birds, already sheltered by the deserted edifice, not a
living being moved in what was once the temple of the Eastern world.
Ulpius was gone.

These events took place in the year 389. In 390, Pagan ceremonies were
made treason by the laws throughout the whole Roman Empire.

From that period the scattered few who still adhered to the ancient
faith became divided into three parties; each alike insignificant,
whether considered as openly or secretly inimical to the new religion of
the State at large.

The first party unsuccessfully endeavoured to elude the laws prohibitory
of sacrifices and divinations by concealing their religious ceremonies
under the form of convivial meetings.

The second preserved their ancient respect for the theory of Paganism,
but abandoned all hope and intention of ever again accomplishing its
practice. By such timely concessions many were enabled to preserve--and
some even to attain--high and lucrative employments as officers of the
State.

The third retired to their homes, the voluntary exiles of every
religion; resigning the practice of their old worship as a necessity,
and shunning the communion of Christians as a matter of choice.

Such were the unimportant divisions into which the last remnants of the
once powerful Pagan community now subsided; but to none of them was the
ruined and degraded Ulpius ever attached.

For five weary years--dating from the epoch of the prohibition of
Paganism--he wandered through the Empire, visiting in every country the
ruined shrines of his deserted worship--a friendless, hopeless, solitary
man!


Throughout the whole of Europe, and all of Asia and the East that still
belonged to Rome, he bent his slow and toilsome course. In the fertile
valleys of Gaul, over the burning sands of Africa, through the sun-
bright cities of Spain, he travelled--unfriended as a man under a curse,
lonely as a second Cain. Never for an instant did the remembrance of
his ruined projects desert his memory, or his mad determination to
revive his worship abandon his mind. At every relic of Paganism,
however slight, that he encountered on his way, he found a nourishment
for his fierce anguish, and employment for his vengeful thoughts.
Often, in the little villages, children were frightened from their
sports in a deserted temple by the apparition of his gaunt, rigid figure
among the tottering pillars, or the sound of his hollow voice as he
muttered to himself among the ruins of the Pagan tombs. Often, in
crowded cities, groups of men, congregated to talk over the fall of
Paganism, found him listening at their sides, and comforting them, when
they carelessly regretted their ancient faith, with a smiling and
whispered assurance that a time of restitution would yet come. By all
opinions and in all places he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose
strange delusions and predilections were not to be combated, but to be
indulged. Thus he wandered through the Christian world; regardless
alike of lapse of time and change of climate; living within himself;
mourning, as a luxury, over the fall of his worship; patient of wrongs,
insults, and disappointments; watching for the opportunity that he still
persisted in believing was yet to arrive; holding by his fatal
determination with all the recklessness of ambition and all the
perseverance of revenge.

The five years passed away unheeded, uncalculated, unregretted by
Ulpius. For him, living but in the past, hoping but for the future,
space held no obstacles--time was an oblivion. Years pass as days,
hours as moments, when the varying emotions which mark their existence
on the memory, and distinguish their succession on the dial of the
heart, exist no longer either for happiness or woe. Dead to all
freshness of feeling, the mind of Ulpius, during the whole term of his
wanderings, lay numbed beneath the one idea that possessed it. It was
only at the expiration of those unheeded years, when the chances of
travel turned his footsteps towards Alexandria, that his faculties burst
from the long bondage which had oppressed them. Then--when he passed
through those gates which he had entered in former years a proud,
ambitious boy, when he walked ungreeted through the ruined temple where
he had once lived illustrious and revered--his dull, cold thoughts arose
strong and vital within him. The spectacle of the scene of his former
glories, which might have awakened despair in others, aroused the
dormant passions, emancipated the stifled energies in him. The projects
of vengeance and the visions of restoration which he had brooded over
for five long years, now rose before him as realised already under the
vivid influence of the desecrated scenes around. As he stood beneath
the shattered porticoes of the sacred place, not a stone crumbling at
his feet but rebuked him for his past inaction, and strengthened him for
daring, for conspiracy, for revenge, in the service of the outrage gods.
The ruined temples he had visited in his gloomy pilgrimages now became
revived by his fancy, as one by one they rose on his toiling memory.
Broken pillars soared from the ground; desecrated idols reoccupied their
vacant pedestals; and he, the exile and the mourner, stood forth once
again the ruler, the teacher, and the priest. The time of restitution
was come; though his understanding supplied him with no distinct
projects, his heart urged him to rush blindly on the execution of his
reform. The moment had arrived--Macrinus should yet be avenged; the
temple should at last be restored.

He descended into the city; he hurried--neither welcomed nor
recognised--through the crowded streets; he entered the house of a man
who had once been his friend and colleague in the days that were past,
and poured forth to him his wild determinations and disjointed plans,
entreating his assistance, and promising him a glorious success. But
his old companion had become, by a timely conversion to Christianity, a
man of property and reputation in Alexandria, and he turned from the
friendless enthusiast with indignation and contempt. Repulsed, but not
disheartened, Ulpius sought others who he had known in his prosperity
and renown. They had all renounced their ancient worship--they all
received him with studied coldness or careless disdain; but he still
persisted in his useless efforts. He blinded his eyes to their
contemptuous looks; he shut his ears to their derisive words.
Persevering in his self-delusion, he appointed them messengers to their
brethren in other countries, captains of the conspiracy that was to
commence in Alexandria, orators before the people when the memorable
revolution had once begun. It was in vain that they refused all
participation in his designs; he left them as the expressions of refusal
rose to their lips, and hurried elsewhere, as industrious in his
efforts, as devoted to his unwelcome mission, as if half the population
of the city had vowed themselves joyfully to aid him in his frantic
attempt.


Thus during the whole day he continued his labour of useless persuasion
among those in the city who had once been his friends. When the evening
came, he repaired, weary but not despondent, to the earthly paradise
that he was determined to regain--to the temple where he had once
taught, and where he still imagined that he was again destined to
preside. Here he proceeded, ignorant of the new laws, careless of
discovery and danger, to ascertain by divination, as in the days of old,
whether failure or success awaited him ultimately in his great design.

Meanwhile the friends whose assistance Ulpius had determined to extort
were far from remaining inactive on their parts after the departure of
the aspiring priest. They remembered with terror that the laws affected
as severely those concealing their knowledge of a Pagan intrigue as
those actually engaged in directing a Pagan conspiracy; and their
anxiety for their personal safety overcoming every consideration of the
dues of honour or the claims of ancient friendship, they repaired in a
body to the Prefect of the city, and informed him, with all the
eagerness of apprehension, of the presence of Ulpius in Alexandria, and
of the culpability of the schemes that he had proposed.