Produced by Al Haines.
ARIUS
THE LIBYAN
_A ROMANCE_
_OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH_
BY
NATHAN CHAPMAN KOUNS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1914
COPYRIGHT BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1883.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER
I. Locus in Quo
II. To Us a Child is Born: to Us a Son is Given
III. How Men lived in the Kingdom of Heaven
IV. Fine Training for a Christian Man
V. A Pagan Hermit, Old and Gray
VI. Flotson of the Middle Sea
VII. Theckla finds One God and heareth of Another
VIII. Who is Hapi?
IX. The Democracy of Faith
X. Faith and Philosophy
XI. "For the Work's Sake"
XII. The One Thing Needful
XIII. The Net Result of Law
XIV. The Blind Receive their Sight
XV. Love and Parting
XVI. Before the Temple of Serapis
XVII. Crucified unto the World
BOOK II.
I. "His Most Catholic Majesty"
II. A Naval Question
III. The Politics of Religion
IV. The Prophecy of Gaius
V. A Born Ecclesiastic
VI. The One Great Battle of Christendom!
VII. The Subversion of the Primitive Church
VIII. The Abdication of Constantine
IX. "I have no Superior but Christ"
X. The Communion of the Saints
XI. One Jot that passed from the Law
XII. An Imperial Repentance
XIII. Well done, Good and Faithful Servant
ARIUS THE LIBYAN.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
LOCUS IN QUO.
A long time ago, Etearchus, King of Axus, in Crete, married a second
wife (as many better men have also done), and she persuaded him to get
rid of Phronime, the pretty daughter of his former spouse. Thereupon
Etearchus agreed with a merchant of Thera that he would take Phronime
away in his ship and let her down into the sea. The merchant, true to
the letter of his bargain, did let her down into the sea, but true also
to that natural tenderness toward a pretty woman which inspires the
breast of every man who is fit for anything in this world, he quickly
drew her up again by a rope which he had fastened around her lissome
waist for that purpose, and conveyed her safely enough to Thera.
There Phronime met another man, Polymnestus by name, a descendant of the
ancient Minyae, who also had a keen eye for feminine beauty, and him she
married. By this Polymnestus our Phronime gave birth to a man-child,
who grew up to be a terrible stammerer, and was therefore called Battus.
And afterward, when Grinus, the Theran king, made a pilgrimage to the
oracle of Delphi to see whether the oracle would tell him some remedy
for a fearful drought which then afflicted all the land of Thera, Battus
the Stammerer went along with him to see whether the same sacred oracle
would tell him some remedy by which to cure himself of stuttering. To
both of these suppliants the oracle made the same answer, and this
answer was as follows: "FOUND A CITY IN LIBYA!" But they did not know
where Libya was, and were, therefore, very low-spirited about finding
any cure for the drought and for the stammering; until it chanced that
upon their homeward voyage they fell in with an ancient fisherman,
Corobius by name, who had once been driven by storms upon the African
coast, and he undertook to pilot them to Libya.
And afterward, it was about 630 B.C., Battus the Stutterer went with a
colony to Libya, and founded there the city of Cyrene, almost ten miles
from the Mediterranean, nearly two thousand feet above the level of the
sea, with the grand Barcan mountains rising between it and the great
desert of the same name. From this colony afterward sprang (Pentapolis,
the Grecian five-cities) Cyrene, Bernice, Arsinoe, Barca, and Apollonia.
Thus far testifieth Herodotus, the father of history, who, if not always
entirely trustworthy, is certainly no greater liar than the rest of the
tribe.
Battus became king of all Cyrenaica, and his descendants, by the name of
Battidae, did rule that land, and maintain the prosperity of Cyrene
through eight generations, until the Ptolemies of Egypt conquered the
country, and under their patronage Apollonia, the seaport, became the
chief city.
It would be a great error to suppose that because Cyrene was on the
northern coast of Africa, and near the vast and arid Barcan Desert, it
was therefore an unpleasant seat. On the contrary, it may well be
doubted whether a more delightful locality can be found on earth. All
Pentapolis is remarkably healthful and pleasant, especially Cyrene and
its vicinity. The lofty mountain-range slopes gently away to the very
sands of earth's middle sea, the waters of which temper the heat of the
climate, while the high mountains lying farther inland ward off the hot
blasts of the desert. In Cyrene, and between the city and the sea, a
luxuriant soil produces almost every fruit, flower, and grain known to
both tropical and temperate latitudes. The grand fountain of Apollo,
which the Arabs of our age call 'Ain Sahat, gushed up in the very midst
of it. The mean temperature is 85 deg. Fahr., and the variations
thereof are gradual and insignificant.
In the year 26 B.C., Apion, the last lineal descendant of the Egyptian
Ptolemies, bequeathed the city to the Romans.
Cyrene, so happily situated, became noted, not only for its prosperity
and salubriousness, but for the intellectual life and activity of its
inhabitants. It long possessed a famous medical school; it gave to fame
Callimachus, the poet; Carneades, the founder of the new academy at
Athens; Aristippus, the disciple of Socrates; Eratosthenes, the
Polyhistor; and Synesius, one of the most elegant of ancient Christian
writers.
Not far from beautiful and prosperous Cyrene, on one of those gentle
declivities which were washed by the waters of the Mediterranean, there
was, in A.D. 265, a comfortable stone farm-house, pleasantly located in
the midst of a considerable tract of cultivated lands. The farm faced a
small bay and the limitless sea northwardly; southwardly the high range
of the Barcan mountains rolled grandly away, their nearer slopes
inclosing the farm between the highlands and the bay, and imparting to
the beautiful place a most attractive sense of quiet and seclusion from
the busy world. The house was one story high, containing seven rooms,
and the ground plan of it was exactly the outline of a cross, there
being four rooms and a portico in the length thereof, and three in its
greatest width.
At this house, in the last-named year, was born a man-child, whose fate
it was to become one of the grandest, purest, least understood, and most
systematically misrepresented characters in human history--Arius the
Libyan, the Heretic--whose fortunes, good and evil, whose experiences,
heterodox or orthodox, shall be followed in these pages with genuine
love and admiration, with profoundest pity also, and yet with a sincere
desire to deal justly with his grand and beautiful memory, seeking to
"nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice."