lightning when I saw thee, 'There stands my Pollux, just as he ought to
look!' And I will never let thee depart living from my house until thou
hast promised me thy head and thy body." I willingly promised the
strange old man to come again the next day; and I did so the more
gladly when I afterwards learnt that my violent friend was Xenarchus,
the greatest sculptor in marble and bronze that Italia has known for a
long time. The next day I went again, and found my Castor. It was
Totila; and I cannot deny that the great resemblance surprised me,
although Totila is older, taller, stronger, and incomparably more
handsome than I. Xenarchus says that we are like a pale and a
gold-coloured citron--for Totila has fairer hair and beard--and just in
this manner, the master swears, were the two Dioscuri alike and unlike.
So we learnt to know and love each other amongst the statues of the
gods and goddesses in the studio of Xenarchus; became, in truth, Castor
and Pollux, inseparable and intimate as they; and already the merry
populace of Neapolis calls us by these names when we wander arm in arm
through the streets. But our new-made friendship was still more quickly
ripened by a threatened danger, which might easily have nipped it in
the bud. One evening, as usual, we had wandered out of the Porta Nolana
to seek refreshment after the heat of the day in the Baths of Tiberius.
After the bath--in a mood of sportive tenderness--you will blame it--I
had thrown my friend's mantle over me, and set his helmet, decorated
with the swan's wings, upon my head. He entered into the joke, and,
with a smile, threw my chlamys[4] around him; and, chatting peacefully,
we went back through the pine grove in the gloom of approaching night
to the city. All at once a man sprang upon me from a taxus-bush behind
me, and I felt cold steel at my throat. But the next moment the
murderer lay at my feet, Totila's sword in his breast. Only slightly
wounded, I bent over the dying man, and asked him what reason he had to
hate and murder me. But he stared in my face, and breathed out, "Not
thee--Totila, the Goth!" and he gave a convulsive shiver and was dead.
By his costume and weapons, we saw that he was an Isaurian mercenary.'"

Again the hand which held the letter dropped, and Cethegus pressed the
other to his forehead.

"Madness of chance!" he said; "to what mightest thou not have led!" And
he read to the end. '"Totila said he had many enemies at Ravenna. We