Perhaps you do not care to hear the rest?'
'Go on,' said AEnone, shuddering with a sickening apprehension of what
was to come.
'Well, the first day his oldest child was slain, and the body sent to
him; and the next day the second one slain, and in like manner sent to
him; and so on until but his wife and one child were left. Then he came
in and gave himself up.'
'And this brave man--fighting for his country--you have made a slave
of!' exclaimed AEnone, impetuously. 'He has been stripped of his family
one by one, and now you would place him in the arena, to be the victim
of wild beasts, or at the best, of other slaves!'
'What else would you wish? The man is of a warlike nature; and it were
better for him to bravely contend for his life in the presence of the
emperor himself, than ignominiously to wear it out in the base labor of
the quarries. And I will tell you what I meant to have done. I know
where are his wife and remaining child, with whom he yesterday entered
Rome; and if in the amphitheatre he had won the victory for me, I would
have restored them to him and given him his freedom besides.
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