“Just look. No sooner has that cur received your alms than he decoys a child, in order to mate with her.” “Which goes to prove,” answered Mela, “that I gave money to the kind of man who knows full well what to do with it.” Meanwhile, the brat Comatas, squatting on the heated flagstone and sucking his thumbs, was laughing at the sight of a pebble glistening in the sun. “Besides,” resumed Mela, “you must admit, Apollodorus, that the way in which Posocharis makes love is not a bit philosophical. The dog is assuredly wiser than our young debauchees of the Palatine, who love amid perfumes, tears, and laughter, with languor or with passion...” As he spoke, a hoarse clamour arose in the prætorium, deafening to the ears of the Greek and the three Romans. “By Pollux!” exclaimed Lollius, “the suitors whose case our friend Gallio is trying are shouting like dockers, and it seems to me that together with their growls a stench of sweat and onions reaches us.” “Nothing is more true,” quoth Apollodorus. “But, were Posocharis a philosopher instead of the dog he is, far from sacrificing to the Venus of the cross-roads, he would flee from the whole breed of women, and attach himself solely to some youth, whose eternal comeliness he would contemplate merely as the expression of an inner beauty more noble and more precious.” “Love,” resumed Mela, “is an abject passion. It disturbs the reason, destroys noble impulses, and diverts the most elevated ideas to the vilest cares. It has no place in a sensible mind. As the poet Euripides teaches us....” Mela did not finish his sentence. Preceded by lictors, who pushed the crowd aside, the proconsul came out of the basilica, and went up to his friends.