ystically
washed, renewed, strengthened.

And how eagerly, with what a light heart, would Flavian have taken his
place in the amphitheatre, among the youth of his own age! with what an
appetite for every detail of the entertainment, and its various
accessories:--the sunshine, filtered into soft gold by the vela, with
their serpentine patterning, spread over the more select part of the
company; the Vestal virgins, taking their privilege of seats near the
empress Faustina, who sat there in a maze of double-coloured gems,
changing, as she moved, like the waves of the sea; the cool circle of
shadow, in which the wonderful toilets of the fashionable told so
effectively around the blazing arena, covered again and again during
the many hours' show, with clean sand for the absorption of certain
great red patches there, by troops of white-shirted boys, for whom the
good-natured audience provided a scramble of nuts and small coin, flung
to them over a trellis-work of silver-gilt and amber, precious gift of
Nero, while a rain of flowers and perfume fell over themselves, as they
paused between the parts of their long feast upon the spectacle of
animal suffering.

During his sojourn at Ephesus, Lucius Verus had readily become a
patron, patron or protege, [236] of the great goddess of Ephesus, the
goddess of hunters; and the show, celebrated by way of a compliment to
him to-day, was to present some incidents of her story, where she
figures almost as the genius of madness, in animals, or in the humanity
which comes in contact with them. The entertainment would have an
element of old Greek revival in it, welcome to the taste of a learned
and Hellenising society; and, as Lucius Verus was in some sense a lover
of animals, was to be a display of animals mainly. There would be real
wild and domestic creatures, all of rare species; and a real slaughter.
On so happy an occasion, it was hoped, the elder emperor might even
concede a point, and a living criminal fall into the jaws of the wild
beasts. And the spectacle was, certainly, to end in the destruction,
by one mighty shower of arrows, of a hundred lions, "nobly" provided by
Aurelius himself for the amusement of his people.--Tam magnanimus fuit!

The arena, decked and in order for the first scene, looked delightfully
fresh, re-inforcing on the spirits of the audience the actual freshness
of the morning, which at this season still brought the dew. Along the
subterranean ways that led