[183] THE CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF A CRIMINAL SLAVE. Such executions in theatrical form, especially pantomimic representations of them, were no rarity in the arena. Condemned criminals were specially trained for such performances. “They entered, clad in costly, gold-broidered tunics and purple mantles, and adorned with golden wreaths; suddenly, like the death-dealing robes of Medea, flames burst from these magnificent garments, in which the miserable creatures died a cruel death. There was scarcely a torture or terrible end known in history or literature, with whose representation the populace had not been entertained in the amphitheatre. Hercules was seen burning to death on Mt. Oeta, Mucius Scaevola holding his hand over the brazier of coals till it was consumed, the robber, Laureolus, the hero of a well-known farce, fastened to a cross and torn by wild beasts. At the same spectacle, another condemned criminal, in the character of Orpheus, ascended from the ground as if returning from the nether-world. Nature seemed enchanted by his playing, the rocks and trees moved towards him, birds hovered over him, countless animals surrounded him; when the scene had lasted long enough, he was torn to pieces by a bear.” (Friedlaender II, 268, etc.) It can scarcely be termed an unwarrantable license, that Lycoris presents a similar spectacle for the amusement of her guests. The masters’ right to dispose of the lives and persons of their slaves had been restricted in the first century, it is true; but the omnipotent Parthenius was doubtless superior to such legal edicts. [184] DACI. A people living in the region now called Hungary, east of the Danube. [185] BLOOD-HOUNDS. (_Molossi._) The dogs from Molossis in eastern Epirus were famous sleuth-hounds. (Hor. Virg. etc.) [186] PATRICIAN WAY. (_vicus Patricius_) ran between the Esquiline and Viminal hills. [187] THIS IS VIOLENCE! Julius Caesar’s famous exclamation just before his murder, when Cimber Tullius, having approached him with a petition, after a refusal, seized him by the toga. (Suet. _Jul. Caes._ 82.) [188] I SHOULD ADVISE YOU, FREEDMAN. Their former condition of slavery affixed an ineffaceable stigma upon all freedmen, especially in the eyes of the old senatorial nobility. Even the vast power attained by some of the emperor’s freedmen, for instance the high chamberlain Parthenius, was of no avail in this respect; they too were at heart despised by all free-born citizens, much as they strove, from motives of prudence, to conceal this contempt beneath protestations of sycophantic devotion. Quintus addressing Stephanus as “freedman,” could not fail to be taken by the latter as a mortal insult.