"And then this pretended mercy to the slaves is such a disappointment to the poor people. How they do love to see a good tough battle between a man and a lion! and all this innocent pleasure they may lose (if the gods don't send us a good criminal soon) from this cursed law." "What can be worse policy," said Clodius, sententiously, "than to interfere with the manly amusements of the people?" "Well, thank Jupiter and the Fates! we have no Nero at present," said Sallust. "He was, indeed, a tyrant; he shut up our amphitheatre for ten years." "I wonder it did not create a rebellion," said Sallust. "It very nearly did," returned Pansa, with his mouth full of wild boar. Here the conversation was interrupted for a moment by a flourish of flutes, and two slaves entered with a single dish. "Ah! what delicacy hast thou in store for us now, my Glaucus?" cried the young Sallust, with sparkling eyes. Sallust was only twenty-four, but he had no pleasure in life like eating--perhaps he had exhausted all the others; yet had he some talent, and an excellent heart--as far as it went. "I know its face, by Pollux!" cried Pansa; "it is an Ambracian kid. Ho!" snapping his fingers, a usual signal to the slaves, "we must prepare a new libation in honor to the new-comer." "I had hoped," said Glaucus, in a melancholy tone, "to have procured you some oysters from Britain; but the winds that were so cruel to Cæsar have forbid us the oysters." "Are they in truth so delicious?" asked Lepidus, loosening to a yet more luxurious ease his ungirdled tunic. "Why, in truth, I suspect it is the distance that gives the flavor; they want the richness of the Brundusium oyster. But at Rome no supper is complete without them." "The poor Britons! There is some good in them after all," said Sallust; "they produce an oyster!" "I wish they would produce us a gladiator," said the ædile, whose provident mind was still musing over the wants of the amphitheatre. "By Pallas!" cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned his steaming locks with a new chaplet, "I love these wild spectacles well enough when beast fights beast; but when a man, one with bones and blood like ours, is coldly put on the arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest is too horrid: I sicken--I gasp for breath--I long to rush and defend him. The yells of the populace seem to me more dire than the voices of the Furies chasing Orestes. I rejoice that there is so little chance of that bloody exhibition for our next show!" The ædile shrugged his shoulders; the young Sallust, who was thought the best natured man in Pompeii, stared in surprise. The graceful Lepidus, who rarely spoke for fear of disturbing his features, cried, "Per Hercle!" The Parasite Clodius muttered, "Ædepol;" and the sixth banqueter, who was the umbra of Clodius, and whose duty it was to echo his richer friend when he could not praise him--the parasite of a parasite,--muttered also, "Ædepol."