Quo Vadis
By HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ Condensation by PROF. WILLIAM FENWICK HARRIS " 'I DO not know to a certainty her name even--Lygia or Callina? They call her Lygia in the house, for she comes of the Lygian nation; but she has her own barbarian name, Callina. It is a wonderful house--that of those Plautiuses. There are many people in it; but it is as quiet there as in the groves of Subiacum. For a number of days I did not know that a divinity dwelt in the house. Once about daybreak I saw her bathing in the garden fountain; and I swear to thee by that foam from which Aphrodite rose, that the rays of the dawn passed right through her body. I thought that when the sun rose she would vanish before me in the light, as the twilight of morning does. Since then I have seen her twice; and since then, too, I know not what rest is, I know not what other desires are, I have no wish to know what the city can give me. I want not women, nor gold, nor Corinthian bronze, nor amber, nor pearls, nor wine, nor feasts; I want only Lygia.'" Thus did Vinicius, young Roman patrician of the time of Nero, announce his love for Lygia, daughter of a king, beautiful hostage from her nation, forgotten in the turmoil of the world-empire and brought up as a Roman girl. Vincius was speaking to his uncle Petronius, known to his own time as to us as Arbiter Elegantiarum, trained in all the art and beauty of Greece, wise, witty, and learned, gaily staking his life in his daily battle of wits with Tigellinus, who provided for the grosser desires of the tyrant Nero as Petronius did for his finer and more artistic ones.
It was a time when the conflicting tides of a pagan age sadly degenerate from the sturdy days of pristine. Roman virtues mingled with those of a new era in the world only recently heralded from Judea. In the complicated threads of the picture of Rome, capital of the world, appear the figures of Peter and Paul, on their mission of spreading the new religion of Christ; Poppaea, wife of Nero, beautiful as a dream, but wicked as a nightmare; Eunice, the charming slave of Petronius; Chilo, wily Greek who can be Christian or pagan as profit leads him; Ursus, prodigious in his strength, simple as a child in his faith in Christ and his devotion to Lygia (from whom G.B.S. may have drawn a suggestion in Androcles and the Lion); and many minor folk who help to make the story stand out as unusually human among the numerous tales of Greco-Roman times.