The slave hastened to inform the party that the scroll fastened to the cork betokened its birth from Chios, and its age a ripe fifty years.
'How deliciously the snow has cooled it!' said Pansa. 'It is just enough.'
'It is like the experience of a man who has cooled his pleasures sufficiently to give them a double zest,' exclaimed Sallust.
'It is like a woman's "No",' added Glaucus: 'it cools, but to inflame the more.'
'When is our next wild-beast fight?' said Clodius to Pansa.
'It stands fixed for the ninth ide of August,' answered Pansa: 'on the day after the Vulcanalia—we have a most lovely young lion for the occasion.'
'Whom shall we get for him to eat?' asked Clodius. 'Alas! there is a great scarcity of criminals. You must positively find some innocent or other to condemn to the lion, Pansa!'
'Indeed I have thought very seriously about it of late,' replied the aedile, gravely. 'It was a most infamous law that which forbade us to send our own slaves to the wild beasts. Not to let us do what we like with our own, that's what I call an infringement on property itself.'
'Not so in the good old days of the Republic,' sighed Sallust.
'And then this pretended mercy to the slaves is such a disappointment to the poor people. How they do love to see a good tough battle between a man and a lion; and all this innocent pleasure they may lose (if the gods don't send us a good criminal soon) from this cursed law!'