"She is good. Sometimes she seems sad; she says she languishes with tedium in the midst of her riches; she is indifferent to everything, and in that mood she is capable of letting all her slaves be crucified without interfering. But when she is happy she is as kind as a mother, and she will not allow us to be punished. Her overseer in charge of the slaves is a cruel man, an Iberian freedman, who watches us, and at every instant threatens us with the lash and the cross. He has whipped my father several times on account of a lost ewe, or a goat which had broken its leg, or because a little milk was spilled in the cheese-making season. I would have received his blows myself had it not been for the respect he feels for me on account of having seen me caressed sometimes by Sónnica."
Rhanto spoke of the terrible situation of the slaves with the naturalness of a creature accustomed from birth to witnessing such severities.
"In winter," she continued, "I go to the mountain with my father, and I await with impatience the coming of the season when my mistress will return to the villa, and I can come down to the plain where there are flowers. Then I can spend the whole day in the shade of a tree surrounded by my goats."
"And how have you learned something of Greek?"
"Sónnica speaks it with rich people of the city, who are her friends, and with the slaves who serve her. Besides——"
She hesitated, and her pale cheeks flushed.
"Besides," she persisted, with animation, "my friend Erotion, the son of Mopsus, the archer who came from Rhodes, speaks it. He is a friend who helps me watch the goats when he is not working in the pottery, which also belongs to Sónnica."
She pointed to the great works near the river, the famous Saguntine potteries, which revealed, between clay walls, the cupolas of its ovens like enormous red bee-hives.
From one side of the road among the trees, sounded mellow notes, wild and joyous flute-tones, and Actæon saw a boy spring into the highway. He was about the same age as Rhanto, tall, slender, barefooted, clad only in a soft goat-skin which hung over his left shoulder, leaving his right exposed, and was tied together at the waist. His eyes were like live coals, his black hair had bluish tones and, forming short ringlets, shook like a heavy mane with the nervous movements of his head. His arms, thin but strong, with the skin stretched by the tension of veins and tendons, were stained to the elbow by the red potter's clay.
Actæon, as he contemplated the short, correct profile of the handsome youth, and the nervous vivacity of his body, was reminded of the apprentices to the sculptors at Athens, artistic youths who in the broad glare of day, before returning to the studios, scandalized the well-behaved citizens by their frolics in the promenade of the Cerameicus.