She was the daughter of the priest of Apollo, and was herself a priestess to the same god. She is said to have lived in the time and under the authority of the Præfect Olybius, who became devoted to her mental and personal accomplishments and very great beauty. He is said to have sought her in marriage, and, after great labour and exertion, to have brought about such a state of affairs as to insure her approval and consent. But, although thus the affianced bride of Olybius, by some means she had held intercommunion with the private teachers of Christianity, and was converted to its faith; a fact known only to her and them. Upon such a state of things, arrives from Probus, Rome’s imperial lord, Vopiscus, charged to admonish the præfect how fame bore tidings of the frequent apostasy from the true religion of the gods, and the increase of the unholy faith of the Galileans at Antioch; and that the laws were made to be executed upon the godless, whose wicked and incestuous rites offend the thousand deities of Rome. Olybius well knows that the least faltering on his part would probably be followed by his being shown the mandate for Vopiscus to supersede him in the government; for which he determines to not give him the least pretence: hence he orders the immediate arrest of all suspected; convenes his council in the halls of justice, and announces thus his views: “Hear me, ye priests on earth, ye gods in heaven! By Vesta, and her virgin-guarded fires; By Mars, the sire and guardian god of Rome; By Antioch’s bright Apollo; by the throne Of him whose thunder shakes the vaulted skies; And that dread oath I add, that binds the immortals, The unblessed waters of Tartarean Styx; Last, by the avenger of despised vows, The inevitable, serpent-haired Eumenides, Olybius swears, thus mounting on the throne Of justice, to exhaust heaven’s wrath on all That have cast off their fathers’ gods for rites New and unholy. From my heart, I blot Partial affection and the love of kindred; Even if my father’s blood flowed in their veins, I would obey the emperor and the gods!” MILLMAN. * * * The prisoners are ushered in, heard, and ordered to death; among whom a female veiled, as if Phœbus-chosen! “What! dare they rend our dedicated maids, Even from our altars? Haste! withdraw the veil, In which her guilty face is shrouded close. Ha! their magic mocks my sight! I seem to see What cannot be——Margarita! Answer, if thou art she!” His mind was agonized at the thoughts of her position: silently, to himself, he says—