In vases of delicate murra huge bunches of blood-red roses hung their drooping heads, and beneath the feet carpets of heavy silk hid the exquisite beauty of mosaics of lapis-lazuli and chrysoprase.
And in the midst of all this stately gorgeousness a creature—hardly human—raging round like a thwarted beast.
Caius Julius Cæsar Caligula was in one of his maddest moods; his hollow eyes glowed with unnatural fire, his scanty, light-coloured hair stood up around his head like the bristly mane of a hyena. Up and down the room he stamped with heavy feet; his robe, weighted with precious stones, striking out around him as he trod the smooth surface of silken carpets or the slippery mosaic of the floor. His thin arms and ankles were covered with numerous bracelets and on his feet were shoes studded with diamonds.
At first sight it would indeed have been difficult to say if it was a man or a woman who was thus pacing this magnificent cage, with wild gestures of the arms and hoarse cries that seemed to proceed from no human throat. The face, white and puffy, might have been of either sex, and the flowing garment and wealth of jewellery suggested a woman rather than a man.
The Cæsar was crazy with rage, and all round the room slaves and attendants cowered, terrified. In his hand he had a short whip with five thongs of solid, knotted leather, at the end of each of which was an iron hook. From these five hooks a few drops of blood were trickling down his white silk tunic. At intervals, at the slightest noise or sound from the cowering slaves, he struck out savagely with the whip, and the thongs with their sharp hooks would descend whizzing on some naked shoulder and tear out a piece of flesh and start the flow of a fresh stream of blood.
Then the madman would break out into a diabolical fit of laughter, and strike out with his whip again and again all around him, wildly and indiscriminately, until his garments and his face were spattered all over with blood, and to right and left of him shrieking figures fell fainting to the ground.
The Cæsar was crazy with rage, and he who had thus angered him reclined on a couch, out of the reach of the shrieking demon, and his thin lips were curled in a smile of satisfaction. It was Caius Nepos who was here that he might betray those of his accomplices who had swerved from their allegiance to himself, and behind him—well hidden by the draperies of the couch—cowered Hun Rhavas, the dusky slave of the treasury, he who yesterday had appeared before the tribunal of the praefect of Rome for conspiracy to defraud the State in connection with the sale of the slave-girl Nola.
The law in such matters was severe. It demanded that a delinquent against the State—if he be a slave—shall lose his right hand, or his tongue, or his ears; that he should moreover forfeit his entire hard-saved belongings to the treasury and lose all chance of ever obtaining his freedom. But the praefect had been lenient, and though he could not dismiss the offender, he mitigated his punishment.
Hun Rhavas was publicly scourged and branded, but he lost neither ears, tongue, nor hand, nor was he deprived of the peculium with which ultimately he hoped to purchase his own freedom and that of his children. Yet such was the African's nature, such the result of the training which slavery in the imperial entourage had drilled into him, that Hun Rhavas forgot the clemency and only remembered the punishment.
With bleeding back and mind saturated with hate, he sought audience of the Emperor, and obtained it half an hour after Caius Nepos, the praetorian praefect, had himself been introduced in the presence of Caligula. The story which Hun Rhavas—the paid spy—brought to the ear of Cæsar, was but a confirmation of what Caius Nepos had to tell.