I sat down at once and wrote to him that I had not opened his note. If I ever did, it would be, I said, because I accepted his verdict. Epictetus really did seem to have borrowed from Paul. The subject was very interesting to me from a historical as well as a literary point of view; and I hoped he would not think it waste of time if I investigated it a little further. At the same time, I sent a note to Flaccus. Æmilius Scaurus, I said, had sent me some “words of Christus” extracted from Christian books, and I desired to receive the books themselves. As for the “scriptures” from which Paul so frequently quoted in their Greek form, I knew that I should have no difficulty in procuring copies of all or most of them from Sosia. This I resolved to do on the morrow, or rather in the day that was now dawning. It was not a lecture-day. Even if it had been, in the mood in which I then was, I should have thought a lecture or two might be profitably missed. CHAPTER VII DAVID AND MOSES The Greek translation of the Scriptures shewn me by Sosia was in several volumes of various sizes and in various conditions. Unrolling the one that shewed most signs of use, I found that, although it was in prose, it was a translation of Hebrew poems, mostly very short, and of a lyrical character. One of them had in its title the name of “David,” which I had met with in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Sosia told me that he was the greatest of the ancient kings of the Jews. Ordering the other volumes to be sent to my rooms, I took this back with me, and began to read it immediately, beginning with the poem on which I had chanced in the shop. It was a prayer for purification from sin: “Pity me, O God, according to thy great pity, and according to the multitude of thy compassions blot out my transgression. Cleanse me still more from my crime, and purify me from my sin.” So far, the poem was intelligible to me. I was familiar with the religious rites of cleansing from blood-guiltiness—mentioned in connexion with Orestes and many others by the Greek poets and recognised in various forms all over the world. So I said, “This king has committed homicide. He has been purified with lustral rites and sacrifices. But he needs some further rites: ‘Cleanse me still more,’ he says. The poem will tell me, I suppose, what more he needs.”