o precious to stake me in return.'

'My Phillida--my beautiful dancing-girl!'

'I never buy women,' said the Greek, carelessly rearranging his chaplet.

The musicians, who were stationed in the portico without, had commenced
their office with the kid; they now directed the melody into a more
soft, a more gay, yet it may be a more intellectual strain; and they
chanted that song of Horace beginning 'Persicos odi', etc., so
impossible to translate, and which they imagined applicable to a feast
that, effeminate as it seems to us, was simple enough for the gorgeous
revelry of the time. We are witnessing the domestic, and not the
princely feast--the entertainment of a gentleman, not an emperor or a
senator.

'Ah, good old Horace!' said Sallust, compassionately; 'he sang well of
feasts and girls, but not like our modern poets.'

'The immortal Fulvius, for instance,' said Clodius.

'Ah, Fulvius, the immortal!' said the umbra.

'And Spuraena; and Caius Mutius, who wrote three epics in a year--could
Horace do that, or Virgil either said Lepidus. 'Those old poets all
fell into the mistake of copying sculpture instead of painting.
Simplicity and repose--that was their notion; but we moderns have fire,
and passion, and energy--we never sleep, we imitate the colors of
painting, its life, and its action. Immortal Fulvius!'

'By the way,' said Sallust, 'have you seen the new ode by Spuraena, in
honour of our Egyptian Isis? It is magnificent--the true religious
fervor.'

'Isis seems a favorite divinity at Pompeii,' said Glaucus.

'Yes!' said Pansa, 'she is exceedingly in repute just at this moment;
her statue has been uttering the most remarkable oracles. I am not
superstitious, but I must confess that she has more than once assisted
me materially in my magistracy with her advice. Her priests are so
pious, too! none of your gay, none of your proud, ministers of Jupiter
and Fortune: they walk barefoot, eat no meat, and pass the greater part
of the night in solitary devotion!'

'An example to our other priesthoods, indeed!--Jupiter's temple wants
reforming sadly,' said Lepidus, who was a great reformer for all but
himself.

'They say that Arbaces the Egyptian has imparted some most solemn
mysteries to the priests of Isis,' observed Sallust. 'He boasts his
descent from the race of Rameses, and declares that in his family the
secrets of remotest antiquity are treasured.'

'He certainly possesses the gift of the evil e