Silanus the Christian: Large Print

I forbid you to go into the senate-house." "As long as I am a senator, go I must." Two voices were speaking from one person-the first, pompous, coarse, despotic; the second, refined, dry, austere. There was nothing that approached stage-acting-only a suggestion of one man swelling out with authority, and of another straightening up his back in resistance. These were the first words that I heard from Epictetus, as I crept late into the lecture-room, tired with a long journey over-night into Nicopolis. I need not have feared to attract attention. All eyes were fixed on the lecturer as I stole into a place near the door, next my friend Arrian, who was absorbed in his notes. What was it all about? In answer to my look of inquiry Arrian pushed me his last sheet with the names "Vespasian" and "Helvidius Priscus" scrawled large upon it. Then I knew what it meant. It was a story now nearly forty years old-which I had often heard from my father's old friend, milius Scaurus-illustrating the duty of obeying the voice of the conscience rather than the voice of a king. Epictetus, after his manner, was throwing it into the form of a dialogue