The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-08-25

Philanmon could bear no more. An
other moment and he had hurled
down through the dense mass Of spec
tators, clearing rank after rank of
seats by the sheer strength Of mad
ness, leaped tho balustrade into the
orchestra below, and rushed across
the space to the foot of the platform.
'Pelagia! Sister! My sister! Have
mercy on me! on yourself! I will hide
you! save YOU and we will fee to-
gether out of this Internal place! this
world of devils. l am your brother!
Gomez
She looked at him one moment with
wide, wild eyes,-the truth flashed on
her
Brother"
And she sprang from the platform
into his arms.
A vision of a lofty window in Athens,
looking out over far olive yards and
gardens, and the bright roofs and
basins of the Piraeus, and the broad
blue sea, with the purple peaks of
Aegina beyond all and a dark-eyed
boy, with his arm around her neck,
pointed laughing to the twinkling
masts in the far harbor, and called her
! sister-The dead soul woke her; and
with wild cry she recoiled from him
! in an agony Of shame, and covering
; her face with both her hands, sank
down among the blood-stained sands.
| A yell, as of all hell broke loose,
rang along that vast circle.
Down with him! Away with him.
Cruelty the slave, Give the barbarian
to the beasts! To the beasts with him,
noble Prefect,"
| The pleasure-loving people of Alex
| Ir;o fol> Ii, 70 t1,a !,
who so rudely interrupted the delici-
! staged for them, "Aphrodite Rising
From the Sea-
1t was Alexandria in the fifth CEN
fury of our era. The city founded by a
king who dreamed not in empires but
in continents, placed at the strategic
point where it would command three
of those great units, but achieved a
pre-eminence in beauty, in vice, in
learning, in turbulence, in the cosmo-
politan character of its people. The
three continents which Alexander
would unite into one had poured into
his city their best and their worst,
and each strove desperately for SUI
premacy. Many a man in those days
must have thought that
East is East and West is West,
And never the twain shall wed,
though meet they did in ways as tenn
pestuous as the most violent Of matri-
nlony. The empire, nominally Chris
tan in the persons of the rulers since
the unsuccessful attempt of Julian to
turn back the hands of time to the
faith of paganism, found itself in con-
slant clashes with the growing power
Of the church; Orestes, the imperial
project, and Cyril, the militant bishop,
wed with each other in dispatches to
Constantinople, each complaining at
the others usurpations; the army OF
DICTIONARIES and the vast throngs OF
monks each entertained a considerable
respect for the fighting qualities of the
other.
The Jews were in great numbers
and were not in the happiest position
between church and empire; while the
descendants of Alexander's Macedon,
ians and Greeks from al quarters OF
The eastern Mediterranean, could not
forget that they had once been the
masters of Egypt. Constant conflict
in the streets between the partisaps
of each side laid a fitting scene for
Charles Kingsley's religious philoso
phic historical melodrama.
Cyril, Bishop and later saint, is
nominally the leader of the battling
churchmen of the tale; the great AL
gustine and the philosophic church
men Of the tale; the great Augustine
and the philosophic Synesius, bishops
both, are minor personages of the
drama, with many other passing fig
ures of the church, but the leading
character from that side is the humble
Philammon, the young boy of the
monastery in the desert, who makes
his way in the simplicity of his zeal
to brave the world, the flesh, and the
devil, where SO many other monks oil
fiction have found that interesting
triad, keeping headquarters at Alex
andria. The city was ruled by Orestes
so far as any project could rule that
unduly cosmopolis, worldly anc
elusive person, who, not satisfied witt
the troubles already at hand, would
| conspire to erect an empire of Africa
, out Of the difficulties of Rome anc
, Constantinople, and to crown as his
empress Hypatia, idealist, mathematic
ian, neo-Platonist, leader and teacher
Of what remained of Greek philosophy
as a living force. Under Hypatia's
sway fell the young Philammon by
reason Of her beauty, her power o.
I speech, and the inherited appeal O.
philosophy to one whose ancestry wa:
Athenian. An appeal of another sort
came to him from Peligia, dancer ant
. beauty, darling of the city in genera
, and of individuals in particular. Tt
the charm of Hypatia yielded not onl!
the worldly project and the simple
monk, but the most interesting figure
of the story, Raphael-Aben-Ezra, de
scended from the blood of Solomon
rich, lazy, and selfish to all appear
ance, but the parsonage in whose sou