"Ah! beautiful!" cried the child; "now come away."
"Nice and neat as an execution," said a powerfully-built, dusky, middle-aged man, having a long, ruddy beard, streaked with gray, around whom were several slaves in Asiatic dress. This person also the reader has met before. "But," added he, "I am going up for my own trial, and I hope it will not be followed by another execution."
"I only hope it will" cried the interesting child. "What fun it would be to see a man strangled."
"Who is that infant monster, Thellus?" asked Paulus.[195]
"He is the son of Germanicus and Agrippina; his name is Caius. You see, young as he is, he already wears the caligæ of the common soldiers, among whom he continually lives. It is his delight. They nickname him Caligula. Do you know, there are good chances he yet wears the purple, and succeeds Augustus, or at least Augustus's next heir, as emperor of the world."
"Happy world will it be under his rule," said Paulus.
Suddenly there were cries of "Make way." Lictors moved, making large room among the crowd. Sejanus appeared in the robes of a prætor; and Paulus and his friend Thellus found themselves borne along, like leaves in a stream, toward the back of the Mamurran palace, in a large room on the ground floor of which they presently beheld the big, dusky-colored man of fifty or thereabouts, with the long, ruddy, gray-streaked beard, standing before a sort of bar. Behind the bar, on a chair of state, like the curule chair of the senators, Augustus was sitting. A crowd of famous persons, many of whom we have already had occasion to mention, stood behind him, and on either hand Livy, Lucius Varius, Haterius, Domitius Afer, Antistius Labio, Germanicus, and Tiberius Cæsar were there. In a row behind were Cneius Piso, Pontius Pilate, and the boy Herod Agrippa.
"And so," said Augustus, "you tell us you are the son of Herod the Great, as he is called; in other words, Herod the Idumæan; his son Alexander?"
"We have seen," said Paulus to Thellus, in a whisper, "the fate of a dog; we are now to learn that of a king, or a pretender to the dignity."
"Great and dread commander, such I am," answered the red-bearded, big, dark man.