In the public square rose a beautiful little temple to Diana-Selene-Phoebe-Astarte--the triple goddess Hecate, mother of the gods. Like enormous wasps greedily intent upon a honeycomb, monks had surrounded the temple on all sides, crawling along the lovely white cornice, clambering up ladders, and to the chant of psalms, smashing the statues and bas-reliefs. The columns were trembling on their bases, fragments of marble flying in all directions. The delicate edifice seemed to wince like a living creature. Finally an attempt was made to set the temple on fire; but as it was wholly built of marble, all efforts in this direction were fruitless. Suddenly a strange noise rang out from the interior, a deafening and resonant series of shocks, while triumphant howls of the crowd rose to the sky. "Bring ropes, ropes! Hide her immodest limbs!" In a hubbub of hymns and wild laughter the mob, by means of ropes, dragged out of the temple the superb silver body of the goddess, which had been moulded by Scopas. Step by step, it came thundering down. "Cast her in the fire! in the fire!" The figure was dragged into the muddy market-place. There a monk was declaiming a passage from the celebrated edict of Constantine II, the brother of Constantius-- "'Let there be an end of superstition, and let sacrifices be abolished' (_Cesset superstitio sacrificiorum, aboleatur insania!_). "Fear nothing; break, sack, plunder everything in that temple of demons!" Another was reading by torchlight from a parchment scroll the following words from the book _De errore profanarum religionum_, by Firmicus Maternus-- "Divine Emperors! Come! succour the unfortunate heathen. Let us snatch them by force from hell rather than leave them to perish. Seize the temple-ornaments and let their riches feed your treasury. Let him who sacrifices to idols be torn from the earth, root and branch (_Sacrificans diis eradicabitur_). Thou shalt deliver him to death; thou shalt stone him with stones, were that offender thy son, thy brother, or the wife that sleeps upon thy heart!" And over the crowd swept the exultant shout-- "Death! Death to the gods of Olympus!" An Arian monk of gigantic stature, his lank black hair plastered to his sweaty face, heaved an axe above the goddess, seeking where to strike. A voice advised-- "In the belly! In her abominable belly!" The great silver body rolled over mutilated; the blows rang pitiless, leaving gaps bitten in the metal. An old pagan stood by and veiled his face from the sacrilege. He was secretly weeping at the thought that now the end of the world, the end of everything, was come, for the earth would no longer bring forth a blade of corn. A hermit from the deserts of Mesopotamia, clothed in sheepskin, wearing coarse sandals and an empty gourd slung from his shoulder, stood over the statue, sheep-crook in hand--