And thus it happened that Tryphæna and others of her slaves were not afraid to speak freely, when she seemed to invite their confidence. From Britannicus she had heard what Pomponia had taught him; she had found from these meek followers of the ‘foreign superstition,’ that their beliefs and practice were inconceivably unlike the caricatures of them which were current among the populace. Because all men hated them, they were accused of hating all men; but Octavia found that love, no less than purity and meekness, was among their most essential duties. She was obliged to exercise the extremest caution in the expression of her own opinions, but she felt an interest deeper than she could express in all that Tryphæna told her of the chief doctrines of Christianity. And though she could scarcely form any judgment on what she heard, she felt a sense of support in truths which, if they did not convince her reason, yet kindled her imagination and touched her heart. One doctrine of the Christians came home to her with quickening power--the doctrine of the life everlasting. In Paganism that doctrine had no practical existence. The poets’ dream of meadows of asphodel and islands of the blest, where Achilles and Tydides unbound the helmets from their shadowy hair, and where the thin _eidola_ of kings and heroes pursued a semblance of their earthly life, had little meaning for her. Like Britannicus, she was fond of reading the best Greek poets. But there was no hopefulness in them. In Pindar she read-- ‘By night, by day, The glorious sun Shines equal, where the blest, Their labours done, Repose forever in unbroken rest.’[43] And in Homer-- ‘Thee to the Elysian plain, earth’s farthest end, Where Rhadamanthus dwells the gods shall send; There mortals easiest pass the careless hour, No lingering winter there, nor snow, nor shower; But Ocean ever, to refresh mankind, Breathes the shrill spirit of the western wind.’ But she had only to unroll the manuscript a little further, and was chilled to the heart by the answer of Agamemnon to the greeting of Ulysses:-- ‘Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom, Nor think vain words, he cried, can ease my doom Better by far laboriously to bear A weight of woe, and breathe the vital air, Slave to the meanest hind that begs his bread, Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead!’