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134 DARKNESS AND DAWN
But she had only to unroll the manuscript a little further, and
was chilled to the heart by the answer of Agamemnon to the
greeting of Ulysses :
'
Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom,
Nor think vain words, he cried, can ease my doom
Better by far laboriously to bear
A weight of woe, and breathe the vital air,
Slave to the meanest hind that begs his bread,
'
Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead !
And though Cicero had written his Tusculan disputations to
prove the doctrine of immortality, had he not, in his letters
and speeches, spoken of that doctrine as a mere pleasing speculation,
which might be discussed with interest, but which no
one practically held ? Yet to these good Christians that doctrine
was an unshakable conviction, a truth which consoled
their heaviest afflictions. To them the eternal, though unseen,
was ever present. It was not something future, but a condition
of which they breathed the atmosphere both here and now.
To them the temporal was the shadowy the eternal was the
;
only real.
While Octavia was thus silently going through the divine
education which was to prepare her for all that was to come,
Britannicus was supremely happy in the Sabine farm. Its
homeliness and security furnished a delightful contrast to the
oppressive splendour of the Palace at Eome. There, in the far
wild country, he had none but farm labourers about him, except
the members of the Flavian family, who, on the father's
side, rose but little above the country folk. He was as happy
as the day was long. He could lay aside all thoughts of rank
and state, could dress as he liked, and do as he liked, and roam
over the pleasant hills, and fish in the mountain streams, with
no chance of meeting any one but simple peasant lads. With
Titus and his two cousins, young Flavius Sabinus and Flavius
Clemens, he could find sympathy in every mood, whether grave
or gay. Titus with his rude health, his sunny geniality, his
natural courtesy a boy ' tingling with life to the '
finger tips
was a friend in whose society it was impossible to be dull.
Flavius Clemens was a youth of graver nature. The shadow
of far-distant martyrdom, which would dash to the ground his
splendid earthly prospects, seemed to play over his early years.
He had already been brought into contact with Christian in-