A city here the tetrarch Philip built, Or raised to more magnificent, which then, In honor of dishonorable name Imperial, Tiberius Cæsar, he Called Cæsarea, and Philippi too Eponymous therewith for surname joined; But Paneas, earlier name, clung to the place, As to this day it clings in Banias. BOOK XIV. FOR DAMASCUS. Coming together again at Cæsarea Philippi (Paneas, Banias) after an interval of days, Saul and Sergius cross the southern spur of Hermon. A violent thunderstorm comes slowly up during the afternoon, which gives Sergius occasion, by way of mask to his own secret disquietude, to quote his Epicurean poet Lucretius on the subject of Jupiter's control of thunderbolts. As the storm increases in violence, the fears of Sergius overpower him, and he breaks down at last into a deprecatory prayer and vow to Jupiter. Saul then, the storm still raging, rehearses from Scripture appropriate fragments of psalm, timing them to the various successive bursts of tempest. The sound of a tranquil human voice has a quieting effect on Sergius, and even on the frightened steeds of the two travellers. The storm ceases, and they pass the night under a serene sky, ready to set out the next morning for the last stage of their journey to Damascus. FOR DAMASCUS. The splendor of the morning yet once more Was a theophany in Syria, When Saul and Sergius, met, from Paneas Started, with mind to overpass that day The spur of Hermon interposed between Them and Damascus. "Strange the human bent," Said Saul, "the universal human bent, Toward worship of unreal divinities! 'Paneas!' The very sound insults the name And solitary majesty of God, Jehovah, Ever-living, Only True. Think of it! 'Pan', forsooth! And God, who made These things which we behold, these waters, woods, And mountains, glens, and rocky cliffs, and caves, Who these things made, and made the mind of man Capacious of Himself, or capable At least of knowing Him Creator, such A God thrust from His own creation forth, By His own noblest creature thus thrust forth, That a rough, rustic, gross, grotesque, burlesque, Goat-footed, and goat-bearded, horned and tailed Divinity like Pan, foul caricature At best of man himself who fashions him, And out of wanton fancy furnishes him His meet appendages of brute wild beast-- That this deform abortion of the brain Might take the room, made void, of God outcast, And, with his ramping, reeling, riotous rout Of fauns and satyrs, claim to be adored! I feel the Hebrew blood within me boil At outrage such from man on God and man! Phoebus Apollo seems an upward reach Of human fancy in theogony; Some height, some aspiration, there at least, Toward what in man, if not the noblest, yet Is nobler than the beasts that browse, or graze.