But this Chateaubriand had not the slightest intention of doing. Far from it--he rather meant to add to their number, in order to exhibit the vast superiority of the Christian to the antique apparatus. As he has no command of verse, he determines to write his epic in prose; but, great master of prose as he is, we know in anticipation how he will grope after a style. And we are sensible, as we read, of a confusion of influences--Homer, the Revelation of St. John, Dante and Milton, the Fathers of the Church and Suetonius. The action takes place in the days of Diocletian; one half of the characters are pagans, the other half Christians. The hero, Eudore, wins the heart of a young pagan girl; he converts her, and they die together as martyrs in the arena of the Colosseum. Her father is a Greek priest of the Homeric gods. Some of the events happen in ancient Gaul. His imitation of the Homeric style has led the author into much artificiality and exaggeration. In the first place he has made his Greeks too religious. They show the same childlike faith in their gods as do those Homeric heroes from whom they are separated by the space of eleven centuries. The Greeks of the age of Eudore were for the most part confirmed sceptics, and those who still believed in their gods did it in a rationalistic manner. Chateaubriand's Greek maiden comes upon Eudore in the forest, while he is resting under a tree. He is young and handsome. He rises hurriedly when he sees her. "Are not you the hunter Endymion?" she stammers confusedly. "And you," asks the young man in his turn, "are not you an angel?" These are not simply polite speeches; the speakers mean what they say. In Chateaubriand's pages it is the most simple matter possible for two lovers living in the most enlightened country in the world to take each other for legendary characters and supernatural beings. Cymodocée's father says in the same style to the young man: "Prithee, my guest, forgive my frankness; I have ever yielded obedience to truth, _the daughter of Saturn_ and the mother of virtue." Even as far back as the days of Plato a Greek was perfectly capable of naming truth without mentioning either its parents or the grandparents of virtue. We come upon phrases which might have been translated from Homer. When Cymodocée wants to find out who Eudore is, she says: "In what harbours has your ship cast anchor? Do you come from Tyre, famed for the wealth of its merchants? or from beautiful Corinth, after receiving precious gifts from your hosts?" &c.