"They will send for you when they have reclined," said the attendant, in answer to a glance of inquiry from Marcia; and, a moment later, the summons came.
Walls, floors, ceilings, every part of the house through which they passed, seemed covered with roses clustered, festooned, and superlaid. Suddenly they found themselves at the entrance of the great banquet hall, where two triclinia were set facing each other, with room for the servants to pass between and minister to the wants of the feasters.
At the table to the east—that of honour—reclined Stenius Ninius, in the middle place of the middle couch, with Hannibal himself at his right, the place of honour above all. Marcia was led to the head of the lowest couch, next to the Carthaginian leader, where she found Pacuvius Calavius reclining below her, as the phrase went; while on the couch directly opposite lay the priest of Melkarth in the lowest place, and Perolla in the highest. The other places, below Pacuvius, between Stenius and the priest, and between the priest and Perolla, were assigned to the women, while the other table, over which Pacuvius Ninius presided, was arranged in similar fashion.
V.
THE BANQUET.
Marcia had felt an instinctive shrinking when she saw that the women, also, were to recline, after the manner of the dissolute Greeks, instead of sitting, as she had been taught to consider the only decent posture for a Roman maid or matron. Then the thought of her mission brought the blush surging to her cheeks, whence it receded, leaving them pale with a sterner resolve. Was not love of country the greatest virtue? It was time to school herself, to shrink at nothing in that cause. As she took her place, she noticed that the priest of Melkarth, who lay directly opposite, had been regarding her fixedly.
She could see his face now, and it was not a pleasing one. The Semitic features, fine and noble in their best form, but capable of greater depths of degeneration than those of any other type, were in his case exaggerated to an extreme degree of coarseness. The mouth was large and badly formed, the forehead low, the small eyes peered out snakelike from under heavy, puffy lids. The nose alone was cut with any measure of fineness, and that projected, wide-nostrilled, and aquiline as the beak of a bird of prey. It would have been difficult to imagine a face more gross and sensual in its lines, and the look of low admiration and eagerness which it now wore, was well calculated to bring out the sensuality in its most repulsive form. Marcia felt her cheeks burning under the fixedness of the man's gaze, and, looking down, she struggled to compose herself by a close study of the gorgeous coverlid of the couch,—a fine Campanian texture, dyed scarlet, and heavily embroidered with figures of birds and beasts and flowers, worked into an elaborate design.
Even then, his eyes seemed to burn through her hair, through her brain, down into her heart, and she found her will revolting more violently than ever against the possibilities involved in her mission.
The voice of Hannibal, addressing some conventional compliment to Stenius upon the perfection of the arrangements, came as an intense relief, for the others all turned toward the speaker, and, a moment later, the slaves passed around with silver basins and ewers, pouring scented water upon the hands of the guests and drying them with dainty flickings of filmy napkins. Vessels of gold and silver and fine earthenware burdened the tables, while at each end of the garden stood a butler in charge of several large amphorae. Those at the north end were half buried amid imitation mountains, peaked with real snow wherewith the wine was to be cooled, while those at the south were surrounded by more than tropical verdure, with the braziers and vessels of hot water beside them, ready for mixing the warm draughts.