"But he was—" pressed Cæsar.
"Menon." And as he spoke he hissed the words between his teeth. "He is one knave among ten thousand. Why burden your excellency with remembering him?"
So the conversation went on, and Cæsar told how he had been taken prisoner, when a young man, by pirates near Rhodes, and how he had been kept captive by them on a little isle while his ransom was coming.
"Ah!" interrupted Demetrius, "I have heard the whole tale from one of my men who was there. You, kyrios, behaved like a prince. You bade your captors take fifty talents instead of twenty, as they asked, and wrote verses and declaimed to your guards all the time you were awaiting the money, and joined in all their sports; howbeit, you kept telling them that you would crucify them all for the matter."
"Hem!" laughed Cæsar. "Didn't I make good the threat?"
"You did with all save this man, who got away," was his unflinching answer. "Although in mercy you strangled all your captors before you had them put on the crosses."
"Hei!" quoth the Imperator. "I should have spared them to give me criticism of those verses now."
"Kyrios," rejoined Demetrius, "the man who survived assures me that the verses at least were wretched, though your excellency was a very good wrestler."
"Euge! Bravo!" cried Cæsar, and all the company joined in. "I must take a few of your men back to Rome, for we need critics for our rough Latin versifiers."
Drusus, as soon as the laugh passed away, arose, and addressed his chief:—