"
"It had never occurred to me," answered Julian, "that Rome had had
just as many kings as hills--a curious coincidence!"
Maximus the Mystic, who, together with the Sophist Priscus, always
accompanied the Emperor, in order to give him opportunities for
philosophising, immediately objected: "There are no 'coincidences,'
Caesar, everything is reckoned and numbered; everything is created
with a conscious purpose, and in harmonious correspondence--the
firmament of heaven and the circle of the earth."
"You have learnt that in Egypt," Priscus interrupted, "for the
Egyptians see the river Nile in the constellation Eridanus. I should
like to know under which constellation this Lutetia lies!"
"It lies under Andromeda, like Rome," answered Maximus, "but Perseus
hangs over the Holy Land, so that Algol stands over Jerusalem."
"Why do you call that cursed land 'holy'?" broke in Julian, who
could not control his generally quiet temper as soon as any subject
was mentioned connected with Christianity, which he hated.
"I call the land 'holy' because the Redeemer of the world was born
there. And you know that He was born without a father, like Perseus;
you know also that Perseus delivered Andromeda, as Jesus Christ will
deliver Rome and Lutetia."
Julian was silent, for, as a Neo-platonist, he liked analogies
between the heavenly and the temporal, and a poetic figure was more
for him than a rhetorical ornament.
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