Who of you dares
so much! You are silent. Is it too great? I will strike off one
talent. What! still silent? Come, then, throw me once for these
three talents--only three; for two; for one--one at least--one
for the honor of the river by which you were born--Rome East
against Rome West!--Orontes the barbarous against Tiber the
sacred!"
He rattled the dice overhead while waiting.
"The Orontes against the Tiber!" he repeated, with an increase of
scornful emphasis.
Not a man moved; then he flung the box upon the table and, laughing,
took up the receipts.
"Ha, ha, ha! By the Olympian Jove, I know now ye have fortunes to
make or to mend; therefore are ye come to Antioch. Ho, Cecilius!"
"Here, Messala!" cried a man behind him; "here am I, perishing in
the mob, and begging a drachma to settle with the ragged ferryman.
But, Pluto take me! these new ones have not so much as an obolus
among them."
The sally provoked a burst of laughter, under which the saloon
rang and rang again. Messala alone kept his gravity.
"Go, thou," he said to Cecilius, "to the chamber whence we came,
and bid the servants bring the amphorae here, and the cups and
goblets. If these our countrymen, looking for fortune, have not
purses, by the Syrian Bacchus, I will see if they are not better
blessed with stomachs! Haste thee!"
Then he turned to Drusus, with a laugh heard throughout the apartment.
"Ha, ha, my friend! Be thou not offended because I levelled the
Caesar in thee down to the denarii.
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