"Would any of these youths who hear me," added he turning round, "like to break the fine-looking steed at the games, before all the people, instead of Claudius?"
No one replied.
"It will be a distinguished act," persisted he.
Dead silence still.
"Then I will do it myself," he said. "Magister, make a formal note of the matter in your tablets; and be so good as to inform the Cæsar of it, in order that I, on my side, may learn place and time."
The magister, with a low bow and a face expressing the most generous and boundless astonishment, grasped his prettily-mounted stylus, and taking the pengillarin from his girdle drew a long breath, and requested Paulus to favor him with his name and address.
"I am," replied he, "the knight Paulus Lepidus Æmilius, son of one of the victors at Philippi, nephew of the ex-triumvir. I reside at Crispus's inn, and am at present a promised prisoner of Velleius Paterculus, the military tribune."
While the steward wrote in his tablets, Benigna uttered one or two little gasps and fairly fainted away. The slave Claudius saved her from falling, and he now placed her on a bench against the wall.
Paulus, intimating that he would like to return to Crispus's hostelry before dark, and having learnt, in reply to a question, that Claudius could procure from Thellus, the gladiator, a vehicle for Benigna, and that he would request Thellus himself to convey her home, turned to take leave of Dion.
The Athenian, however, said he would show him the way out of the palace. They went silent and thoughtful. In the impluvium they found a little crowd surrounding Augustus, who had returned from his promenade to the camp, and who was throwing crumbs of bread among some pigeons near the central fountain.