Except a few night-birds, already sheltered by the deserted edifice, not a living being moved in what was once the temple of the Eastern world.

Ulpius was gone.
These events took place in the year 389.

In 390, Pagan ceremonies were made treason by the laws throughout the whole Roman Empire.
From that period the scattered few who still adhered to the ancient faith became divided into three parties; each alike insignificant, whether considered as openly or secretly inimical to the new religion of the State at large.
The first party unsuccessfully endeavoured to elude the laws prohibitory of sacrifices and divinations by concealing their religious ceremonies under the form of convivial meetings.
The second preserved their ancient respect for the theory of Paganism, but abandoned all hope and intention of ever again accomplishing its practice.

By such timely concessions many were enabled to preserve--and some even to attain--high and lucrative employments as officers of the State.
The third retired to their homes, the voluntary exiles of every religion; resigning the practice of their old worship as a necessity, and shunning the communion of Christians as a matter of choice.
Such were the unimportant divisions into which the last remnants of the once powerful Pagan community now subsided; but to none of them was the ruined and degraded Ulpius ever attached.
For five weary years--dating from the epoch of the prohibition of Paganism--he wandered through the Empire, visiting in every country the ruined shrines of his deserted worship--a friendless, hopeless, solitary man! Throughout the whole of Europe, and all of Asia and the East that still belonged to Rome, he bent his slow and toilsome course.

In the fertile valleys of Gaul, over the burning sands of Africa, through the sun-bright cities of Spain, he travelled--unfriended as a man under a curse, lonely as a second Cain.