Egypt -- History -- 30 B.C.-640 A.D. -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English; Hadrian, Emperor of Rome, 76-138 -- Fiction
Favorinus, the sophist, had said of him that one might cry over his
handsome locomotive corpse, if one were not obliged to laugh at it,
and it was said that he had himself declared that he would force his
faithless youth to remain with him. The Alexandrians called him the
Adonis with six legs, on account of the lads who supported him, and
without whom no one ever saw him and who always accompanied him when he
went out. The first time he heard this nickname he remarked: “They had
better have called me sixhanded;” and in fact he had a thoroughly
good heart, he was liberal and benevolent, took fatherly care of his
work-people, treated his slaves well, enriched those whom he set free,
and from time to time distributed large sums among the people in money
and in grain.
Arsinoe looked compassionately on the poor old man who could not buy
back his youth with all his money and all his art.
In the supercilious man who at once came up to Plutarch she recognized
the art-dealer Gabinius to whom her father had shown the door,
on account of the mosaic picture in their sitting-room, but their
conversation was interrupted, for the distribution of the women’s part
for the group of Alexander’s entry into Babylon, was now about to take
place; about fifty girls and young women were sent away from the stage
and went down into the orchestra. The Exegetes, the highest official in
the town, now came forward and took a new list out of the hand of Papias
the sculptor. After rapidly casting an eye on this, he handed it to a
herald who followed him, who proclaimed to all the assembly:
“In the name of the most noble Exegetes I request your attention, all
you ladies here assembled, the wives and daughters of Macedonians and of
Roman citizens. We now come to a distribution of the characters in our
representation of the life and history of the great Macedonian, of the
‘Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,’ and I hereby request those among you
to come upon the stage whom our artists have selected to take part in
this scene in the procession.” After this exordium he shouted in a deep
and resonant voice a long list of names, and while this was going on
every other sound was hushed in the wide amphitheatre.
Even on the stage all was still; only Verus whispered a few remarks
to Titianus, and the curiosity-dealer spoke into Plutarch’s ear, long
sentences with the stringent emphasis which was peculiar to him; and the
old man answered sometimes with an assenting nod, and sometimes with a
deprecatory motion of his hands.
Arsinoe listened with suspended breath to the herald’s proclamation;
she started and colored all over, with her eyes fixed on the bunch of
flowers in her hand, when she heard from the stage loudly uttered and
plain to be heard by all present:
“Arsinoe, the second daughter of Keraunus, the Macedonian and a Roman
citizen.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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