'What can be worse policy,' said Clodius, sententiously, 'than to interfere with the manly amusements of the people?'
'Well thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at present,' said Sallust.
'He was, indeed, a tyrant; he shut up our amphitheatre for ten years.'
'I wonder it did not create a rebellion,' said Sallust.
'It very nearly did,' returned Pansa, with his mouth full of wild boar.
Here the conversation was interrupted for a moment by a flourish of flutes, and two slaves entered with a single dish.
'Ah, what delicacy hast thou in store for us now, my Glaucus?' cried the young Sallust, with sparkling eyes.
Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life like eating—perhaps he had exhausted all the others: yet had he some talent, and an excellent heart—as far as it went.
'I know its face, by Pollux!' cried Pansa. 'It is an Ambracian Kid. Ho (snapping his fingers, a usual signal to the slaves) we must prepare a new libation in honour to the new-comer.'
'I had hoped said Glaucus, in a melancholy tone, 'to have procured you some oysters from Britain; but the winds that were so cruel to Caesar have forbid us the oysters.'