Flavian and Marius sat down under the shadow of a mass of gray rock or ruin, where the sea-gate of the Greek town had been, and talked of life in those old Greek colonies.

Of this place, all that remained, besides those rude stones, was--a handful of silver coins, each with a head of pure and archaic beauty, though a little cruel perhaps, supposed to represent the Siren Ligeia, whose tomb was formerly shown here--only these, and an ancient song, the very strain which Flavian [109] had recovered in those last months.

They were records which spoke, certainly, of the charm of life within those walls.

How strong must have been the tide of men's existence in that little republican town, so small that this circle of gray stones, of service now only by the moisture they gathered for the blue-flowering gentians among them, had been the line of its rampart! An epitome of all that was liveliest, most animated and adventurous, in the old Greek people of which it was an offshoot, it had enhanced the effect of these gifts by concentration within narrow limits.

The band of "devoted youth,"-- hiera neotes.+--of the younger brothers, devoted to the gods and whatever luck the gods might afford, because there was no room for them at home--went forth, bearing the sacred flame from the mother hearth; itself a flame, of power to consume the whole material of existence in clear light and heat, with no smouldering residue.