A Friend of Caesar Part 4

[36] The opponents of the Epicureans; they n.o.bly antagonized the mere pursuit of pleasure held out as the one end of life by the Epicurean, and glorified duty.

"Pratinas, to see her ladyship!" bawled a servant-boy[37] at the doorway, very unceremoniously interrupting the good man and his learnedly sublime lore. And Pratinas, with the softest and sweetest of his Greek smiles, entered the room.

[37] _Cubicularius_.

"Your ladyship does me the honour," he began, with an extremely deferential salutation.

"Oh, my dear Pratinas," cried Valeria, in a language she called Greek, seizing his hand and almost embracing him, "how delighted I am to see you! We haven't met since--since yesterday morning. I did so want to have a good talk with you about Plato's theory of the separate existence of ideas. But first I must ask you, have you heard whether the report is true that Terentia, Caius Glabrio's wife, has run off with a gladiator?"

"So Gabinius, I believe," replied Pratinas, "just told me. And I heard something else. A great secret. You must not tell."

"Oh! I am dying to know," smirked Valeria.

"Well," said the Greek, confidentially, "Publius Sila.n.u.s has divorced his wife, Crispia. 'She went too much,' he says, 'with young Purpureo.'"

"You do not say so!" exclaimed the lady. "I always knew that would happen! Now tell me, don't you think this perfume of iris is delicate?

It's in that little gla.s.s scent bottle; break the neck.[38] I shall use it in a minute. I have just had some bottles sent up from Capua.

Roman perfumes are so vulgar!"

[38] To let out the ointment. Capua was a famed emporium for perfumes and like wares.

"I fear," said Pratinas, doing as bidden, and testing the essence with evident satisfaction, "that I have interrupted your philosophical studies." And he glanced at Pisander, who was sitting lonesome and offended in his corner.

"Oh! not in the least," ran on Valeria; "but though I know you are Epicurean, surely you enjoy Plato?"

"Certainly," said Pratinas, with dramatic dignity, "I suck the sweets from the flowers left us by all the wise and good. Epicurean though I am, your ladyship must permit me to lend you a copy of an essay I have with me, by that great philosopher, the Stoic Chrysippos,[39] although I cannot agree with all his teachings; and this copy of Panaitios, the Eclectic's great _Treatise on Duty_, which cannot fail to edify your ladyship." And he held out the two rolls.

[39] Born 180 B.C.

"A thousand thanks," said Valeria, languidly, "hand them to Pisander.

I will have him read them. A little more white lead, Arsinoe, I am too tanned; make me paler. Just run over the veins of my temples with a touch of blue paint. Now a tint of antimony on my eyelids."

"Your ladyship seems in wonderfully good spirits this morning,"

insinuated Pratinas.

"Yes," said Valeria, with a sigh, "I endure the woes of life as should one who is consoled by philosophy."

"Shall I continue the Plato?" edged in poor Pisander, who was raging inwardly to think that Pratinas should dare to a.s.sume the name of a "lover of learning."

"When you are needed, I can tell you," snapped Valeria, sharply, at the feeble remonstrance. "Now, Semiramis, you may arrange my hair."

The girl looked puzzled. To tell the truth, Valeria was speaking in a tongue that was a babel of Greek and Latin, although she fondly imagined it to be the former, and Semiramis could hardly understand her.

"If your ladyship will speak in Latin," faltered the maid.

"Speak in Latin! Speak in Latin!" flared up Valeria. "Am I deceived?

Are you not Greeks? Are you some ignorant Italian wenches who can't speak anything but their native jargon? Bah! You've misplaced a curl.

Take that!" And she struck the girl across the palms, with the flat of her silver mirror. Semiramis shivered and flushed, but said nothing.

"Do I not have a perfect Greek p.r.o.nunciation?" said the lady, turning to Pratinas. "It is impossible to carry on a polite conversation in Latin."

"I can a.s.sure your ladyship," said the h.e.l.lene, with still another bland smile, "that your p.r.o.nunciation is something exceedingly remarkable."

Valeria was pacified, and lay back submitting to her hairdressers[40], while Pratinas, who knew what kind of "philosophy" appealed most to his fair patroness, read with a delicate yet altogether admirable voice, a number of sc.r.a.ps of erotic verse that he said friends had just sent on from Alexandria.

[40] _Ornatrices_.

"Oh! the shame to call himself a philosopher," groaned the neglected Pisander to himself. "If I believed in the old G.o.ds, I would invoke the Furies upon him."

But Valeria was now in the best of spirits. "By the two G.o.ddesses,"[41] she swore, "what charming sentiments you Greeks can express. Now I think I look presentable, and can go around and see Papiria, and learn about that dreadful Sila.n.u.s affair. Tell Agias to bring in the cinnamon ointment. I will try that for a change. It is in the murrhine[42] vase in the other room."

[41] Demeter and Persephone, a Greek woman's oath.

[42] A costly substance, probably porcelain agate.

Iasus the serving-boy stepped into the next apartment, and gave the order to one of his fellow slaves. A minute later there was a crash.

Arsinoe, who was without, screamed, and Semiramis, who thrust her head out the door, drew it back with a look of dismay.

"What has happened?" cried Valeria, startled and angry.

Into the room came Arsinoe, Iasus, and a second slave-boy, a well-favoured, intelligent looking young Greek of about seventeen. His ruddy cheeks had turned very pale, as had those of Iasus.

"What has happened?" thundered Valeria, in a tone that showed that a sorry scene was impending.

The slaves fell on their knees; cowered, in fact, on the rugs at the lady's feet.

"_A! A! A!_ Lady! Mercy!" they all began in a breath. "The murrhina vase! It is broken!"

"Who broke it?" cried their mistress, casting lightning glances from one to another.

Now the truth had been, that while Agias was coming through a door covered with a curtain, carrying the vase, Iasus had carelessly blundered against him and caused the catastrophe. But there had been no other witnesses to the accident; and when Iasus saw that his mistress's anger would promptly descend on somebody, he had not the moral courage to take the consequences of his carelessness. What amounted to a frightful crime was committed in an instant.

"Agias stumbled and dropped the vase," said Iasus, telling the truth, but not the whole truth.

"Send for Alfidius the _lorarius_,"[43] raged Valeria, who, with the promptness that characterizes a certain cla.s.s of women, jumped at a conclusion and remained henceforth obstinate. "This shall not happen again! Oh! my vase! my vase! I shall never get another one like it! It was one of the spoils of Mithridates, and"--here her eye fell on Agias, cringing and protesting his innocence in a fearful agony.

[43] Whipper; many Roman houses had such a functionary, and he does not seem to have lacked employment.

"Stand up, boy! Stop whining! Of course you broke the vase. Who else had it? I will make you a lesson to all the slaves in my house. They need one badly. I will get another serving-boy who will be more careful."

Agias was deathly pale; the beads of sweat stood out on his forehead; he grasped convulsively at the hem of his mistress's robe, and murmured wildly of "mercy! mercy!" Pratinas stood back with his imperturbable smile on his face; and if he felt the least pity for his fellow-countryman, he did not show it.

"Alfidius awaits the mistress," announced Semiramis, with trembling lips.

Into the room came a brutish, hard-featured, shock-headed man, with a large scar, caused by branding, on his forehead. He carried a short rope and scourge,[44]--a whip with a short handle to which were attached three long lashes, set at intervals with heavy bits of bronze. He cast one glance over the little group in the room, and his dull piglike eyes seemed to light up with a fierce glee, as he comprehended the situation.

[44] _Flagellum_.

"What does your ladyship wish?" he growled.