“It was vacation-time, and that gave me aloose from my business at the bar; for it was the season after the summer’s heat, when autumn promised fair, and put on the face of temperate. We set out, therefore, in the morning early, and as we were walking upon the seashore, and a kindly breeze fanned and refreshed our limbs, and the yielding sand softly submitted to our feet and made it delicious travelling, Cascilius on a sudden espied the statue of Serapis, and, according to the vulgar mode of superstition, raised his hand to his mouth, and paid his adoration in kisses. Upon which Octavius, addressing himself to me, said: ‘It is not well done, my brother Marcus, thus to leave your inseparable companion in the depth of Vulgar darkness, and to suffer him, in so clear a day, to stumble upon stones; stones, indeed, of figure, and anointed with oil, and crowned; but stones, however, still they are;⁠—for you cannot but be sensible that your permitting so foul an error in your friend redounds no less to your disgrace than his.’ This discourse of his held us through half the city; and now we began to find ourselves upon the free and open shore.