ds that were so cruel to Caesar
have forbid us the oysters.'

'Are they in truth so delicious?' asked Lepidus, loosening to a yet more
luxurious ease his ungirdled tunic.

'Why, in truth, I suspect it is the distance that gives the flavor; they
want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. But, at Rome, no supper is
complete without them.'

'The poor Britons! There is some good in them after all,' said Sallust.
'They produce an oyster.'

'I wish they would produce us a gladiator,' said the aedile, whose
provident mind was musing over the wants of the amphitheatre.

'By Pallas!' cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned his streaming
locks with a new chaplet, 'I love these wild spectacles well enough when
beast fights beast; but when a man, one with bones and blood like ours,
is coldly put on the arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest is too
horrid: I sicken--I gasp for breath--I long to rush and defend him. The
yells of the populace seem to me more dire than the voices of the Furies
chasing Orestes. I rejoice that there is so little chance of that
bloody exhibition for our next show!'

The aedile shrugged his shoulders. The young Sallust, who was thought
the best-natured man in Pompeii, stared in surprise. The graceful
Lepidus, who rarely spoke for fear of disturbing his features,
ejaculated 'Hercle!' The parasite Clodius muttered 'AEdepol!' and the
sixth banqueter, who was the umbra of Clodius, and whose duty it was to
echo his richer friend, when he could not praise him--the parasite of a
parasite--muttered also 'AEdepol!'

'Well, you Italians are used to these spectacles; we Greeks are more
merciful. Ah, shade of Pindar!--the rapture of a true Grecian game--the
emulation of man against man--the generous strife--the half-mournful
triumph--so proud to contend with a noble foe, so sad to see him
overcome! But ye understand me not.'

'The kid is excellent,' said Sallust. The slave, whose duty it was to
carve, and who valued himself on his science, had just performed that
office on the kid to the sound of music, his knife keeping time,
beginning with a low tenor and accomplishing the arduous feat amidst a
magnificent diapason.

'Your cook is, of course, from Sicily?' said Pansa.

'Yes, of Syracuse.'

'I will play you for him,' said Clodius. 'We will have a game between
the courses.'

'Better that sort of game, certainly, than a beast fight; but I cannot
stake my Sicilian--you have nothing s