I did not like the dreams. But he made me dream. He was a retiarius. If he had had me alone for a day or two, I feel even now that he would have caught me in his Christian net. I don’t want you to be caught.” Then Scaurus went on to speak of himself at some length. I will set down his exact words for two reasons. First, they shew what pains he had taken to prepare himself for the work of a critic. Secondly, his letter seemed to me to explain in part why he was so set against what he called the soporific or hypnotic art of Paul. He and I approached the apostle in different circumstances. I came to Paul before coming to the gospels. He read the gospels first, and found it impossible to believe them. Then, with a mind settled and fixed against belief, approaching Paul, he found—this I believe to be the fact—that Paul was drawing him towards Christ. He resisted the constraint, thinking that he was resisting a sort of witchcraft. Yes, and even to the end of his life, he fought against the truth, seeing it masked as falsehood. Yet assuredly he loved the truth and spared no pains to reach it. Let my old friend speak for himself in what I will call— SCAURUS’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY “While I am in the mood for telling secrets I may say that, for me, too, this Christian superstition has not been without attractions; and, had there been anything solid in it, I think I should have ascertained it. You must know that in the last year or two of Domitian this sect was brought into notice in Rome among the highest circles by rather painful circumstances—painful, I mean, to me. I had retired from the army. As soon as I had recovered from my wounds, enough to be able to limp about, I looked round me for something to do. I was not in favour with the Emperor. He had lost reputation in the Dacian war; and he was supposed to dislike those officers—there were only a few—who had done creditably in that most discreditable business. I was supposed to be one of the few. At all events, in the ‘regrettable incident’ of Fuscus, I brought off most of my men safe, and we did not run away. Well, I thought I had better lead a retired life. So under the plea of disablement—which was unfortunately only too true, as I was lamed for life—I kept at home in Tusculum all through the reign of Domitian, giving myself up to literature.