"And my grandson, he says to me, 'Grandmother, make me some
meat-broth.' Well, I tell him, 'Yes, darling, I'll go to the market
soon,' and to myself I'm thinking meat is nowadays cheaper than bread.
So I buy some meat for five obols and have it cooked. And in comes a
neighbour and screams at me, 'What are you cooking there? Don't you
know that the meat of the market is not fit to touch to-day?'
"'Why so?'
"'The priests of the goddess have sprinkled the whole market with
water from the sacrifices! There's not a Christian in the town eating
the meat so spoiled. And they're going to kill the sacrificers, and
pull down the devilish temple!'
"I threw the broth to the dogs; just think! five obols, all
wasted!--more than a day's wage thrown away--but all the same I
wouldn't make my own grandson unclean!"
Others were telling how, in the previous year, some miserly Christian
had eaten of the impure meat, which had so rotted his intestines that
his very relatives had had to abandon him, on account of the
contagion.
In the public square rose a beautiful little temple to
Diana-Selene-Phoebe-Astarte--the triple goddess Hecate, mother of the
gods. Like enormous wasps greedily intent upon a honeycomb, monks had
surrounded the temple on all sides, crawling along the lovely white
cornice, clambering up ladders, and to the chant of psalms, smashing
the statues and bas-reliefs.
The columns were trembling on their bases, fragments of marble flying
in all directions. The delicate edifice seemed to wince like a living
creature. Finally an attempt was made to set the temple on fire; but
as it was wholly built of marble, all efforts in this direction were
fruitless.
Suddenly a strange noise rang out from the interior, a deafening and
resonant series of shocks, while triumphant howls of the crowd rose to
the sky.
"Bring ropes, ropes! Hide her immodest limbs!"
In a hubbub of hymns and wild laughter the mob, by means of ropes,
dragged out of the temple the superb silver body of the goddess, which
had been moulded by Scopas. Step by step, it came thundering down.
"Cast her in the fire! in the fire!"
The figure was dragged into the muddy market-place. There a monk was
declaiming a passage from the celebrated edict of Constantine II, the
brother of Constantius--
"'Let there be an end of superstition, and let sacrifices be
abolished' (_Cesset superstitio sacrificiorum, aboleatur insania!_).
"Fear nothing; break, sack, plunder everything in that temple of
demons!" Another was reading by torchlight from a parchment scroll the
following words from the book _De errore profanarum religionum_, by
Firmicus Maternus--
"Divine Emperors! Come! succour the unfortunate heathen. Let us snatch
them by force from hell rather than leave them to perish. Seize the
temple-ornaments and let their riches feed your treasury. Let him who
sacrifices to idols be torn from the earth, root and branch
(_Sacrificans diis eradicabitur_). Thou shalt deliver him to death;
thou shalt stone him with stones, were that offender thy son, thy
brother, or the wife that sleeps upon thy heart!"