of the Syrian sun god.
  But somehow or other Julia Maesa and her daughter's lover, Gannys, managed to convince 
a bunch of soldiers in a tent that this fourteen-year-old Syrian boy should become the 
Emperor of Rome.
  The Army deserted the Imperial Macrinus, and he and his son were hunted down and 
murdered.
  So, high on the shoulders of proud soldiers rode this fourteen-year-old boy! But he 
didn't want to be called by his Roman name. He wanted to be called by the name of the god 
he worshiped in Syria, Elagabalus. The very presence of him in Antioch shook the nerves 
of all citizens. At last, he and three remaining Julias - his aunt, his Mother and his 
grandmother, all of them Syrian Priestesses - left Antioch.
  In Nicomedia, which was very near to us, Elagabalus murdered his Mother's lover. So who 
was left? He also picked up an enormous sacred black stone and brought it back to Rome, 
saying that this stone was sacred to the Syrian sun god, whom all must now worship.
  He was gone, across the sea, but it took sometimes no more than eleven days for a 
letter to reach Antioch from Rome, and soon there were rampant rumors. Who will ever know 
the truth about him?
  Elagabalus. He built a Temple for the stone on the Palatine Hill. He made Romans stand 
around in Phoenician gowns while he slaughtered cattle and sheep in sacrifice.
  He begged the physicians to try to transform him into a woman by creating a proper 
opening between his legs. Romans were horrified by this. At night he dressed as a woman, 
complete with a wig, and went prowling taverns.
  All over the Empire the soldiers started to riot.
  Even the three Julias, grandmother Julia Maesa, his aunt Julia Domna, and his own 
Mother, Julia Soemis, started to get sick of him. After four years, four years, mind you, 
of this maniac's rule, the soldiers killed him and threw his body in the Tiber.
  It did not seem to Marius that there was anything left of the world we had once called 
Rome. And he was thoroughly sick of all the Christians in Antioch, their fights over 
doctrine. He found all mystery religions dangerous now. He served up this lunatic Emperor 
as a perfect example of the fanaticism gaining ground in the times.
  And he was right. He was right.
  It was all I could do to keep him from despair. In truth he had not yet confronted that 
terrible darkness I had once spoken of; he was far too agitated, far too irritated and 
quarrelsome. But I was very frightened for him, and hurt for him, and didn't want him to 
see more darkly, as I did, to be more aloof, expecting nothing and almost smiling at the 
collapse of our Empire.
  Then the very worst thing happened, something we had both feared in one form or 
another. But it came upon us in the worst possible form.
  One night there appeared at our eternally open doors five blood drinkers.
  Neither of us had caught the sound of their approach. Lounging about with our books, we 
looked up to see these five, three women and a man and a boy, and to realize that all 
wore black garments. They were dressed like Christian hermits and ascetics who deny the 
flesh and starve themselves. Antioch had a whole passel of these men in the desert 
roundabouts.
  But these were blood drinkers.
  Dark of hair and eye, and dark of skin, they stood before us, their arms folded.
  Dark of skin, I thought quickly. They are young. They were made after the great 
burning. So what if there are five?
  They had in general rather attractive faces, wellshaped features and groomed eyebrows, 
and deep dark eyes, and all over them I saw the marks of their living bodies - tiny 
wrinkles next to their eyes, wrinkled around their knuckles.
  They seemed as shocked to see us as we were to see them. They stared at the brightly 
lighted library; they stared at our finery, which was in such contrast to their ascetic 
robes.
  "Well," said Marius, "who are you."
  Cloaking my thoughts, I tried to probe theirs. Their minds were locked. They were 
dedicated to something. It had the very scent of fanaticism. I felt a horrid foreboding.
  They started timidly to enter the open door.
  "No, stop, please," said Marius in Greek "This is my house. Tell me who you are, and 
then I perhaps shall invite you over my threshold."
  "You're Christians, aren't you?" I said. "You have the zeal."
  "We are!" said one in Greek. It was the man. "We are the scourge of humanity in the 
name of God and his son, Christ. We are the Children of Darkness."
  "Who made you?" asked Marius.
  "We were made in a sacred cave and in our Temple," said another, a woman, speaking in 
Greek also. "We know the truth of the Serpent, and his fangs are our fangs."
  I limbed to my feet and moved towards Marius.
  "We thought you would be in Rome," said the young man. He had short black hair, and 
very round innocent eyes. "Because the Christian Bishop of Rome is now supreme among 
Christians and the theology of Antioch is no longer of great matter."
  "Why would we be in Rome'?" asked Marius. "What is the Roman Bishop to us?"
  The woman took the fore. Her hair was severely parted in the middle but her face was 
very regal and regular. She had in particular beautifully defined lips.
  "Why do you hide from us? We have heard of you for years! We know that you know things 
- about us and where the Dark Gift came from, that you know how God put it into the 
world, and that you saved our kind from extinction."
  Marius was plainly horrified, but gave little sign of it.
  "I have nothing to tell you," he said, perhaps too hastily. "Except I do not believe in 
your God or your Christ and I do not believe God put the Dark Gift, as you call it, into 
the world. You have made a terrible mistake."
  They were highly skeptical and utterly dedicated.
  "You have almost reached salvation," said another, the boy at the far end of the line, 
whose hair was unshorn and hung to his shoulders. He had a manly voice, but his limbs 
were small. "You have almost reached the point where you are so strong and white and pure 
that you need not drink!"
  "Would that that were true, it's not," said Marius.
  "Why don't you welcome us?" asked the boy. "Why don't you guide us and teach us that we 
may better spread the Dark Blood, and punish mortals for their sins! We are pure of 
heart. We were chosen. Each of us went into the cave bravely and there the dying devil, a 
crushed creature of blood and bone, cast out of Heaven in a blaze of fire, passed on to 
us his teachings."
  "Which were what?" asked Marius.
  "Make them suffer," the woman said. "Bring death. Eschew all things of the world, as do 
the Stoics and the hermits of Egypt, but bring death. Punish them."
  The woman had become hostile. "This man won't help us," she said under her breath. 
"This man is profane. This man is a heretic."
  "But you must receive us," said the young man who had spoken first. "We have searched 
so long and so far, and we come to you in humility. If you wish to live in a palace, then 
perhaps that is your right, you have earned it, but we have not. We live in darkness, we 
enjoy no pleasure but the blood, we feast on the weak and the diseased and the innocent