according to Roman usage, at long intervals of about one hundred and ten years. They were celebrated with great pomp and magnificence, and accompanied by elaborate propitiatory sacrifices to the tutelary deities of Rome. They had been kept last under Severus, and the time had come for another celebration. But year after year of the long reign of Constantine passed, and no notice was taken of them. No omission would have wounded more deeply the sensibilities of the Romans than this. The heathen historian Zosimus, writing a whole century after, ascribed all the woes that had befallen the empire to this one fatal neglect. Again, during his second and last visit to Rome, the Capitoline games were celebrated. A main feature in the ceremonial was a procession along the sacred way to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, in which the Emperor himself was expected to take a part. He flatly refused. Looking down from his residence on the Palatine Hill as the magnificent train wound round its foot, he broke out into expressions of ridicule and contempt. The senate and people were mortally offended. On one occasion, probably during this very visit, his statues were pelted with stones. This insult was reported to Constantine by some indignant courtier. The Emperor passed his hand across his brow. He had a strong sense of humour. "Strange," said he, "that I did not feel hurt." But he did feel hurt, nevertheless; hurt in dignity by this insolence of the Romans, and a new capital arose on the shores of the Bosphorus in protest against the outrage. Christian Constantinople was his revenge on heathen Rome. "He made himself a Greek," said Dante, "to leave Rome to the Pope." Doubtless the Papal power grew more freely when the shadow of the Imperial presence was removed; but the Pope was not in Constantine's mind, and the immediate effect was a deadly side-thrust at heathendom. Rome, the stronghold of heathen sentiment and worship, languished rapidly from this time. Paganism had been stabbed in the heart.