The town of Alexandria was stirred to its very foundations.  From dawn till night every centre of public traffic and intercourse was the scene of hostile meetings between Christians and heathen, with frequent frays and bloodshed, only stopped by the intervention of the soldiery.  Still, as we see that the trivial round of daily tasks is necessarily fulfilled, even when the hand of Fate lies heaviest on a household, and that children cannot forego their play even when their father is stretched on his death-bed, so the minor interests of individual lives pursued their course, even in the midst of the general agitation and peril.

The current of trade and of public business was, of course, checked at many points, but they never came to a stand-still.  The physician visited the sick, the convalescent made his first attempt, leaning on a friendly arm, to walk from his bedroom to the “viridarium,” and alms were given and received.  Hatred was abroad and rampant, but love held its own, strengthening old ties and forming new ones.  Terror and grief weighed on thousands of hearts, while some tried to make a profit out of the prevailing anxiety, and others—­many others—­went forth, as light-hearted as ever, in pursuit of pleasure and amusement.

Horses were ridden and driven in the Hippodrome, and feasts were held in the pleasure-houses of Canopus, with music and noisy mirth; in the public gardens round the Paneum cock-fighting and quail-fighting were as popular as ever, and eager was the betting in new gold or humble copper.  Thus may we see a child, safe on the roof of its father’s house, floating its toy boat on the flood that has drowned them all out; thus might a boy fly his gaudy kite in the face of a gathering storm; thus does the miser, on whom death has already laid its bony hand, count his hoarded coin; thus thoughtless youth dances over the heaving soil at the very foot of a volcano.  What do these care for the common weal?  Each has his separate life and personal interests.  What he himself needs or desires—­the greatest or the least—­is to him more important and more absorbing than the requirements of the vast organism in which he is no more than a drop of blood or the hair of an eyelash.

Olympius was still in concealment in the house of Porphyrius—­Olympius, whose mind and will had formerly had such imperious hold on the fate of the city, and to whose nod above half of the inhabitants were still obedient.  Porphyrius and his family shared his views and regarded themselves as his confederates; but, even among them, the minor details of life claimed their place, and Gorgo, who entered into the struggle for the triumph of the old gods, gave but a half-hearted attention to the great cause to which she was enthusiastically devoted, because a companion of her childhood, to whose attentions she had every claim, delayed his visit longer than was kind.