"He is a soldier, every bit of him," added Coryna. "How different from his elder brother, Dinarchus!"
"Yes, my Dinarchus is a great reader, a young philosopher, a hermit, dear boy. He is now deep in the study of the Christian books. I would my Carnion were at home with him to-day, but he expected to see a wild-beast fight."
"Observe thy husband and my brother—see how calmly they look on!"
"They are soldiers, Coryna, and accustomed as we know to the spectacle of wounds and blood. To them, the arena must be as nothing to a field of battle when the clash of sword and spear is past."
"Oh, it must be racking, revolting!" exclaimed the other, pained at the mental vision of mangled heaps of slain; "and our beloved ones hate the sight."
"They also dislike what they see before them," said Myrtis. "They love skill, but they have no love for wanton play with human life."
"I wish all Rome hated such idle butchery," remarked Coryna earnestly, but rather loudly.
Overhearing these remarks, spoken in the Latin tongue, a number of ladies sneered and smiled. All, or nearly all, who made that wide investing terrace a wreath of brightness and beauty, were dead to pity. At the most they could only feel regret for a wounded favorite or a dying hero.
"I would all the empire were of thy mind, Coryna, and then no such sad spectacle would stain our own beloved, humaner land.
"Christianity is the deadly enemy of all this wicked work. May it prosper!" said the young lady fervently.