"Zoilus! if you are deceiving me, by that oath held sacred in heaven and in hell, I swear—"
"Swear not, my lord, until you have put me to the proof: Have I not engaged to meet you on the night of the 8th of next kalends, to give you an opportunity of judging on the testimony of your own eyesight? Until then, farewell And the slave bounded away before Aurelian could say another word, and chanted as he went:
"She'll sup with the Christian called Theodore,
And her lover Aurelian shell love no more;
Another, another has got him before—
A Christian, a Christian, whom she'll adore,
Adore, adore," etc.
Aurelian, though filled with bitter thoughts, paused to listen, and muttered as he heard the receding strain, which was now being chanted in doggerel Greek: "Well, we Romans are called masters of the world; but we shall yet be mastered by our slaves." There was great reason for the reflection. For the slaves had now grown so numerous in Rome that the Senate feared to pass a law appointing them a distinctive dress, lest they should thereby come to the knowledge of their own strength. A law had been also proposed, though not passed in the legislative council, with the view of lessening their numbers by employing them in the public quarries and mines and other severe works, as the Jews had been long before employed as hewers of wood and drawers of water in the Egyptian bondage. Moreover, about this period writing and book-knowledge generally were, with very few exceptions, confined to the slaves in Rome. It was the sunset of the literature whose noon was lit up by luminaries such as Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Sallust; and the few stray rays which yet lingered behind were either confined to the slave population of the city or, glancing over the Alps and the Pyrenees, rested upon favored spots in the ultramontane provinces.
As Aurelian thought over these and other matters he did not notice the places by which he passed, and soon found himself at the gate of the vestibule before the emperor's palace. He went through the massive bronze door into the atrium or hall. Here he waited while the slave, whose office it was, went to announce his arrival. His thoughts were diverted from the subjects which had engaged them to the magnificence of the scene around. The blue sky and brilliant stars above the compluvium, which was an open space through the roof of the atrium, were shut out and eclipsed by the many-colored lights attached to the marble pillars, white, black, and variegated, by which the slanting tiles of the roof were supported. Underneath the impluvium, which was an enclosed space corresponding and proportioned to the open one above, sent up interwoven ellipses of divers-colored waters through brazen tubes so arranged as to cast a rainbow-like halo over the whole place. Between the rows of pillars thus lighted up, receding in lofty and majestic file far as the eye could reach, and through the fauces, or corridors, formed by the chambers beyond them, there appeared the mellow glow of the lamps around the peristyle in the distance; while the sound of rushing waters fell agreeably on the ear. Nearer to him around the walls of the atrium Aurelian observed that the niches, where were deposited the images of the Emperor's friends and ancestors, were draped in veils of black, as if in mourning for his cousin the late consul Domitilla, but in reality because the family history did not afford many remarkable names beyond those of Vespasian and Titus.
While Aurelian was thus engaged in examining the splendor of the imperial residence, the slave who had gone to announce his arrival returned, and with him the "distributor of seats" in the royal triclinium. Led by the latter, Aurelian entered the triclinium, the Roman dining hall, which was decorated and lighted up in the same manner as the atrium. At the end of it, on an elevated platform of cedar wood, Domitian was seated on a throne of ivory inwrought and decorated with gold. The young noble made a low prostration on bended knees until permitted by touch of the golden sceptre to arise.
"Arise, Aurelian!" said the emperor. "To evidence our high consideration for you, we have delayed our guests ten strokes of the clepsydra. But be not distressed; we shall hear your explanations at another time. Where" (these words were added in an undertone) "have you left our fair cousin and child, Flavia? We expected her to accompany her accepted suitor and future husband."
"My sovereign lord and master! the most noble Flavia has been indisposed for some time, and regrets she cannot be present at the festivities this evening. Her friend the noble Theodora, wife of the Senator Sisinnius, has induced her, for change of air, to visit at their residence for some days, where she will have the advantage of meeting an old and experienced physician named Clement, who has travelled much in the East and thereby become acquainted with herbs and drugs that have acquired for him the repute of a mastery over bodily disease."
"Clement, Clement!" repeated the emperor, striving to recollect himself; "I have heard of him somewhere before; but we shall talk of these things at a more fitting time;" and be waved his sceptre to the steward of the banquet.