not pretty?"

"Very pretty," said Pratinas, looking at the engraving on the ring.
"But perhaps it is not right for me, a grave philosopher, to go to
your banquet."

"How (h)absurd! (H)of c(h)ourse you c(h)an!" lisped Flaccus, who
affected Greek so far as to aspirate every word beginning with a
vowel, and to change every _c_ into a _ch_.

"Well," said Pratinas, laughing, for he was a dearly loved favourite
of all these gilded youth, "I will see! And now Gabinius is inviting
Calatinus also, and we are dispersing for the morning."

"Alas," groaned Ahenobarbus, "I must go to the Forum to plead with
that wretch Phormio, the broker, to arrange a new loan."

"And I to the Forum, also," added Calatinus, coming up, "to continue
this pest of a canvass for votes."

The clients fell into line behind Calatinus like a file of soldiers,
but before Pratinas could start away with the other friends, a
slave-boy came running out from the inner house, to say that "the Lady
Valeria would be glad of his company in her boudoir." The Greek bowed
his farewells, then followed the boy back through the court of the
peristylium.[35]

[35] An inner private court back of the atrium.

III

The dressing room occupied by Valeria--once wife of Sextus Drusus and
now living with Calatinus as her third husband in about four
years--was fitted up with every luxury which money, and a taste which
carried refinement to an extreme point, could accomplish. The walls
were bright with splendid mythological scenes by really good artists;
the furniture itself was plated with silver; the rugs were
magnificent. The mistress of this palatial abode was sitting in a low
easy-chair, holding before her a fairly large silver mirror. She wore
a loose gown of silken texture, edged to an ostentatious extent with
purple. Around her hovered Arsinoe and Semiramis, two handsome Greek
slave-girls, who were far better looking than their owner, inasmuch as
their complexions had never been ruined by paints and ointments. They
were expert hairdressers, and Valeria had paid twenty-five thousand
sesterces for each of them, on the strength of their proficiency in
that art, and because they were said to speak with a pure Attic Greek
accent. At the moment they were busy stripping off from the lady's
face a thick layer of dried enamel that had been put on the night
before.

Had Valeria been willing, she might have feared no comparison with her
maids; for from a merely sensuo