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Ducks to the golden fool.' Timon of Athens, iv. 3.
112 DARKNESS AND DAWN
CHAPTER XVI
EVENTS IN THE VILLA
POLLUX
'
Who dares, who dares,
In purity of manhood stand upright
And " say This man 's a flatterer " ? If one be,
So ... are they all
the learned pate
MOKE and more luxurious and irregular became the amusements
of the Villa Pollux. Paganism is protected from complete
exposure by the enormity of its own vices. To show
the divine reformation wrought by Christianity it must suffice
that, once for all, the Apostle of the Gentiles seized heathendom
by the hair, and branded indelibly on her forehead the
stigma of her shame.
Leaving altogether on one side the darker aspects of the
life to which Nero and his boon companions now abandoned
themselves, neither shall we dwell much upon
'
Their gorgeous gluttonies and sumptuous feasts
On citron table and Atlantic stone.'
If the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life could have brought to Nero and Otho any happiness, they
might have been happy. They could lift to their lips the cup
of pleasure crowned to the brim. They soon found it to be
an envenomed goblet, sparkling with the wine of demons.
The rage of luxury, the insanity of egotism, the abandonment
to every form of self-indulgence, served only to plunge them
into deeper lassitude, and, last of all, into more irretrievable
disgust. For, though men have bodies, they
still are spirits,
and when their bodies have command over their spirits, they
only become a lower kind of beast.
To Nero, while he was yet a boy, had been offered all that
carnal minds think the highest boons. The ancient philosophers
used to discuss the question, Whether any one would
'