represented; yea, and darker, even as night is darker
than day.

Upon reaching the palace, I was told that the Emperor was exercising at
the hippodrome, toward which I then bent my steps. It lies at some
distance from the palace, concealed from it by intervening groves. Soon
as I came in sight of it, I beheld Aurelian upon his favorite horse
running the course as if contending for a prize, plying, the while, the
fierce animal he bestrode with the lash, as if he were some laggard who
needed rousing to his work. Swifter than the wind he flew by me, how
many times I know not, without noting apparently that any one was
present beside the attendant slaves; nor did he cease till the horse,
spent and exhausted, no longer obeyed the will of even the Emperor of
the world. Many a noble charger has he in this manner rode till he has
fallen dead. So long used has this man been to the terrific game of war,
and the scenes and sights which that reveals, stirring to their depths
all the direst passions of our nature, that now, at home and at peace,
life grows stale and flat, and needs the artificial stimulants which
violent and extreme modes of action can alone supply. The death of a
horse on the course, answers now for a legion slain in battle; an
unruly, or disobedient, or idle slave hewn in two, affords the relief
which the execution of prisoners has been accustomed to yield. Weary of
inaction, he pants for the day to arrive when, having completed the
designs he has set on foot in the city, he shall again join the army,
now accumulating in huge masses in Thrace, and once more find himself in
the East, on the way to new conquests and fresh slaughter.

As he threw himself from his horse, now breathing hard and scarcely
supporting himself, the foam rolling from him like snow, he saluted me
in his usual manner.

'A fair and fortunate day to you, Piso! And what may be the news in the
city? I have rode fast and far, but have heard nothing. I come back
empty as I went out, save the heat which I have put into my veins. This
horse is he I was seen upon from the walls of Palmyra by your and other
traitor eyes. But for first passing through the better part of my leg
and then the saddle, the arrow that hit me then had been the death of
him. But death is not for him, nor he for death; he and his rider are
something alike, and will long be so, if auguries ever speak truth. And
if there be not truth in auguries, Piso, where is it to be found amo