Those fugitive figures, he would declare, were the enemies of the temple and all that it contained; conspirators against the Emperor and the gods; wretches who were to be driven forth as outcasts from humanity; whose appellation was 'Christian'; and whose impious worship, if tolerated, would deprive him of the uncle whom he loved, of the temple that he reverenced, and of the priestly dignity and renown which it should be his life's ambition to acquire.
Thus tutored in his duties by his guardian, and in his recreations by himself, as time wore on, the boy gradually lost every remaining characteristic of his age.

Even the remembrance of his mother and his mother's love grew faint on his memory.

Serious, solitary, thoughtful, he lived but to succeed in the temple; he laboured but to emulate the high priest.

All his feelings and faculties were now enslaved by an ambition, at once unnatural at his present age, and ominous of affliction for his future life.

The design that Macrinus had contemplated as the work of years was perfected in a few months.