‘Now, potter, you can go,’ said Sejanus; ‘you have all I can give you—stay, how is your daughter named?’
‘Neæra!’ replied Masthlion.
‘Then your girl Neæra will probably have her own way in the end in despite of you. But deprive me not of my Centurion between ye, or you shall lose my favour, I promise you. He is worth more to me than all the maids, wives, widows, and hags in Campania, honest or not—wait!’
He clapped his hands, and the same slave attended as before—a dark-skinned Nubian.
‘Lygdus, is there not an old family friend of the Centurion Martialis, whom he visits on the Aventine?’
‘Mamercus—near the temple of Diana,’ replied the slave laconically.
‘Go thither, potter,—Mamercus will serve your turn better than I,’ said the Prefect, waving his hand and turning his back.
Masthlion followed the Nubian out of the apartment with a brighter countenance, and was quickly on his way to the Aventine.
‘Your Centurion has caught your own complaint,’ said Afer to his patron jestingly.
‘The gods confound it!’ replied the Prefect, ‘a wife will not improve his Centurionship. The fool! to saddle himself with a wife now—a red-faced, brawny-armed brat of a clay-moulder, most likely. As if there were no other arrangement; I’ll try my persuasion. And so for Capreae, my Titus!’