CHAPTER I.

LOCUS IN QUO.

A long time ago, Etearchus, King of Axus, in Crete, married a second wife (as many better men have also done), and she persuaded him to get rid of Phronime, the pretty daughter of his former spouse. Thereupon Etearchus agreed with a merchant of Thera that he would take Phronime away in his ship and let her down into the sea. The merchant, true to the letter of his bargain, did let her down into the sea, but true also to that natural tenderness toward a pretty woman which inspires the breast of every man who is fit for anything in this world, he quickly drew her up again by a rope which he had fastened around her lissome waist for that purpose, and conveyed her safely enough to Thera.

There Phronime met another man, Polymnestus by name, a descendant of the ancient Minyae, who also had a keen eye for feminine beauty, and him she married. By this Polymnestus our Phronime gave birth to a man-child, who grew up to be a terrible stammerer, and was therefore called Battus.

And afterward, when Grinus, the Theran king, made a pilgrimage to the oracle of Delphi to see whether the oracle would tell him some remedy for a fearful drought which then afflicted all the land of Thera, Battus the Stammerer went along with him to see whether the same sacred oracle would tell him some remedy by which to cure himself of stuttering. To both of these suppliants the oracle made the same answer, and this answer was as follows: "FOUND A CITY IN LIBYA!" But they did not know where Libya was, and were, therefore, very low-spirited about finding any cure for the drought and for the stammering; until it chanced that upon their homeward voyage they fell in with an ancient fisherman, Corobius by name, who had once been driven by storms upon the African coast, and he undertook to pilot them to Libya.

And afterward, it was about 630 B.C., Battus the Stutterer went with a colony to Libya, and founded there the city of Cyrene, almost ten miles from the Mediterranean, nearly two thousand feet above the level of the sea, with the grand Barcan mountains rising between it and the great desert of the same name. From this colony afterward sprang (Pentapolis, the Grecian five-cities) Cyrene, Bernice, Arsinoe, Barca, and Apollonia.

Thus far testifieth Herodotus, the father of history, who, if not always entirely trustworthy, is certainly no greater liar than the rest of the tribe.

Battus became king of all Cyrenaica, and his descendants, by the name of Battidae, did rule that land, and maintain the prosperity of Cyrene through eight generations, until the Ptolemies of Egypt conquered the country, and under their patronage Apollonia, the seaport, became the chief city.

It would be a great error to suppose that because Cyrene was on the northern coast of Africa, and near the vast and arid Barcan Desert, it was therefore an unpleasant seat. On the contrary, it may well be doubted whether a more delightful locality can be found on earth. All Pentapolis is remarkably healthful and pleasant, especially Cyrene and its vicinity. The lofty mountain-range slopes gently away to the very sands of earth's middle sea, the waters of which temper the heat of the climate, while the high mountains lying farther inland ward off the hot blasts of the desert. In Cyrene, and between the city and the sea, a luxuriant soil produces almost every fruit, flower, and grain known to both tropical and temperate latitudes. The grand fountain of Apollo, which the Arabs of our age call 'Ain Sahat, gushed up in the very midst of it. The mean temperature is 85 deg. Fahr., and the variations thereof are gradual and insignificant.

In the year 26 B.C., Apion, the last lineal descendant of the Egyptian Ptolemies, bequeathed the city to the Romans.

Cyrene, so happily situated, became noted, not only for its prosperity and salubriousness, but for the intellectual life and activity of its inhabitants. It long possessed a famous medical school; it gave to fame Callimachus, the poet; Carneades, the founder of the new academy at Athens; Aristippus, the disciple of Socrates; Eratosthenes, the Polyhistor; and Synesius, one of the most elegant of ancient Christian writers.

Not far from beautiful and prosperous Cyrene, on one of those gentle declivities which were washed by the waters of the Mediterranean, there was, in A.D. 265, a comfortable stone farm-house, pleasantly located in the midst of a considerable tract of cultivated lands. The farm faced a small bay and the limitless sea northwardly; southwardly the high range of the Barcan mountains rolled grandly away, their nearer slopes inclosing the farm between the highlands and the bay, and imparting to the beautiful place a most attractive sense of quiet and seclusion from the busy world. The house was one story high, containing seven rooms, and the ground plan of it was exactly the outline of a cross, there being four rooms and a portico in the length thereof, and three in its greatest width.

At this house, in the last-named year, was born a man-child, whose fate it was to become one of the grandest, purest, least understood, and most systematically misrepresented characters in human history--Arius the Libyan, the Heretic--whose fortunes, good and evil, whose experiences, heterodox or orthodox, shall be followed in these pages with genuine love and admiration, with profoundest pity also, and yet with a sincere desire to deal justly with his grand and beautiful memory, seeking to "nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice."