Polybius and his companion were kept for three days longer in Athens, the Roman commissioner refusing them a permit to pass to the front. Mummius was still before the city. Till he had entered it the presence of strangers in the camp was considered to be inconvenient. Late in the evening of the third day a despatch arrived from him, dated from the citadel of Corinth. He explained that no resistance had been offered by the Greek army; but that, finding it difficult to believe that so strong a place could be given up without some attempt at defence, he had waited till he could be sure that no stratagem was intended. The city, he added, was perfectly quiet; all the leaders of the hostile army had either fallen in battle or were prisoners in his hands. Diæus was reported to have fled into Arcadia, and to have there committed suicide along with his wife, but the report was not at present confirmed.
The Roman commissioner immediately on receiving this news sent the desired permission to Polybius, and the two friends, who had everything in readiness for their journey, started at once. Travelling all night they reached Corinth, which was not more than thirty miles from Athens, shortly after dawn. The city presented a most lamentable appearance. The great market-place, and all the other squares and open spaces, were thronged with a helpless and miserable crowd of men, women, and children, of all ages and all ranks, doomed to the cruellest lot that humanity can endure. The Senate and People of Rome, provoked, it must be allowed, to the utmost by the insolence and folly of the Corinthians, had passed the savage decree that the whole population of the city should be sent to the slave-market.
The horrible business had already begun. The wretched victims had been divided into lots according to sex and age. The quæstor's clerks—the quæstor, it may be explained, was the officer who had charge of finance—were busy noting down particulars, and the loathsome crew of slave-dealers and their assistants, foul creatures that always followed close on the track of a Roman army, were appraising the goods which were soon to be offered for competition. Nobles of ancient houses, merchants, who but a month before could have matched their riches with the wealthiest capitalists of Rome, the golden youth of the most luxurious city of the world, and, saddest of all, delicate women, whose beauty had been jealously guarded even from sun and wind, stood helplessly exposed to the brutal gaze and yet more brutal handling of Egyptian and Syrian slave-dealers, barbarians to whom, in the haughty pride of their Hellenism, they would scarcely have conceded the title of man.
A CORINTHIAN NOBLEMAN BEING SOLD AS A SLAVE IN THE MARKET-PLACE.
Cleanor recognized among the victims several whose acquaintance he had made during his brief sojourn in Corinth during the previous year. The contrast between their present degradation and the almost insolent pride of their prosperous days touched him to the heart. The emotion of Polybius was even more profound. Some of these men were lifelong friends. He had sat by their side at the council; he had been a guest at their hospitable tables. Some of them bore names associated with the greatest glories of Greece. To see them exposed for sale like so many sheep or oxen was a thing more strange and more horrible than he could have conceived to be possible.
Not less strange, if less harrowing, was the spectacle which presented itself to the two friends when they reached that quarter of the city in which the Roman soldiery had bivouacked. One of the first things that they saw was a group of soldiers off duty busy with a game of hazard. For the convenience of having a level surface on which to throw the dice they had stretched a canvas on the ground. Polybius, whose eye was caught by what looked like a figure on this improvised dice-table, approached and looked over the shoulder of one of the players to examine it more closely. He started back in amazement and horror.
"Great Zeus!" he cried, "what do you think it is, Cleanor, that these fellows have laid there to throw their dice upon? Why, it is one of the finest pictures in the world! It is the 'Dionysus' of Aristides! The city, I have been told, gave twenty talents for it to the artist, and, to my certain knowledge, might have sold it over and over again for twice as much if not more. Look at it. Did you ever see anything finer? See how the god is flinging himself from his car! See with what surprise Ariadne is turning to look at him! And the throng of nymphs and satyrs, did you ever behold such variety, such energy, such grace? And these barbarians are using it for a dice-table!"
"Hush!" said Cleanor warningly. "They may be barbarians, but they are our masters, and it is prudent to be civil."