This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 Excerpt: …with tears, approacheth with the swiftness of the thunderbolt. Voices. Iridion! Iridion! Iridion. Farewell. Elsinoe. Go! Be thou happy and great: and if ever thou shalt sail on the Aegean waters cast a handful of my ashes on Chiara’s shores. They part, never to see each other more. It is the night for which Iridion has lived, the night of Rome’s destruction. His barbarians, the slaves he has bribed by his gifts, his gladiators, his soldiers, are outside his palace together with Masinissa. Scarcely able to brook the delay before Rome’s funeral pyre shall be fired, Iridion feverishly awaits the advent of Simeon’s Christians, when the slaughter is to begin. Iridion. The whole city is in flames. Nay–it was but in my eyeballs that fires burst forth. Where are they? Where are the Christians? If they have betrayed me I am lost. Masinissa. They are finishing their hymns. A messenger from Simeon here hurries in, summoning Iridion to the catacombs. Victor is keeping back the Christians. From a literal point of view the refusal of the Christians to rally round Iridion could not doom to failure a leader who had by now nearly every element in Rome under his control1. But Iridion is not meant to be taken literally. It is an allegory, and as such 1 St. Tarnowski, Zygmunt Krasinski. must be read, with on the one hand its various historical inaccuracies, required by Krasinski for his purpose, such as the open displayal of the cross in the catacombs, with, on the other, its strong colouring of historical truth. Iridion’s dependence on the Christians is one of the ethical foundations upon which the whole of Krasinski’s conception rests. Whatever the material strength on Iridion’s side he cannot win because hatred is only destructive, and in the Krasinskian theory love only c…