ullness of time has
come."

As he spoke he stepped on to the plank which led to the boat from the
shore: Diodoros had already been placed on board. When Andreas laid the
girl on the cushioned seat in the little cabin, he exclaimed, with a
sigh of relief, "Now we are safe!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Caracalla's evening meal was ended, and for years past his friends
had never seen the gloomy monarch in so mad a mood. The high-priest of
Serapis, with Dio Cassius the senator, and a few others of his suite,
had not indeed appeared at table; but the priest of Alexander, the
prefect Macrinus, his favorites Theocritus, Pandion, Antigonus, and
others of their kidney, had crowded round him, had drunk to his health,
and wished him joy of his glorious revenge.

Everything which legend or history had recorded of similar deeds was
compared with this day's work, and it was agreed that it transcended
them all. This delighted the half-drunken monarch. To-day, he declared
with flashing eyes, and not till to-day, he had dared to be entirely
what Fate had called him to be--at once the judge and the executioner of
an accursed and degenerate race. As Titus had been named "the Good,"
so he would be called "the Terrible." And this day had secured him that
grand name, so pleasing to his inmost heart.

"Hail to the benevolent sovereign who would fain be terrible!" cried
Theocritus, raising his cup; and the rest of the guests echoed him.

Then the number of the slain was discussed. No one could estimate it
exactly. Zminis, the only man who could have seen everything, had not
appeared: Fifty, sixty, seventy thousand Alexandrians were supposed to
have suffered death; Macrinus, however, asserted that there must have
been more than a hundred thousand, and Caracalla rewarded him for his
statement by exclaiming loudly "Splendid! grand! Hardly comprehensible
by the vulgar mind! But, even so, it is not the end of what I mean to
give them. To-day I have racked their limbs; but I have yet to strike
them to the heart, as they have stricken me!"

He ceased, and after a short pause repeated unhesitatingly, and as
though by a sudden impulse, the lines with which Euripides ends several
of his tragedies:

"Jove in high heaven dispenses various fates;
And now the gods shower blessings which our hope
Dared not aspire to, now control the ills
We deemed inevitable. Thus the god
To these hath given an end we never though