Some declared that the city
magistrate was still at heart a Pagan, and that he consequently shrunk
from authorising the death of a man who had once been the most
illustrious among the professors of the ancient creed. Others reported
that Ulpius had secured the leniency of his judges by acquainting them
with the position of one of those secret repositories of enormous
treasure supposed to exist beneath the foundations of the dismantled
Temple of Serapis. But the truth of either of these rumours could never
be satisfactorily proved. Nothing more was accurately discovered than
that Ulpius was removed from Alexandria to the place of earthly torment
set apart for him by the zealous authorities, at the dead of night; and
that the sentry at the gate through which he departed heard him mutter
to himself, as he was hurried onward, that his divinations had prepared
him for defeat, but that the great day of Pagan restoration would yet
arrive.
In the year 407, twelve years after the events above narrated, Ulpius
entered the city of Rome.
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