Swift work is destruction! And men lost their wits and looked on at the crime, flinging the delight of the gods into the water and the kiln.

They were wise, very wise; fishes and flames are dumb and cannot cry to heaven.
One barbarian, in one hour can destroy what it has taken the sublimest souls years, centuries, to create.

They glory in destruction and ruin and they can no more build up again such a temple as stood there than they can restore trees that have taken six hundred years to grow.
There--out there, Herse, in the hollow where those black fellows are stirring mortar--they have given them shirts too, because they are ashamed of the beauty of men's bodies--that is where the grotto was where we found your poor father." "The grotto ?" repeated his wife, looking at the spot through her tears, and thinking of the day when, as a girl, she had hurried to the feast of Dionysus and sought her father in the temple.

He had been famous as a gem-cutter.

In obedience to the time-honored tradition in Alexandria, after intoxicating himself with new wine in honor of the god, he had rushed out into the street to join the procession.