A Friend of Caesar | Page 2

and the breezes of the whole wide-spreading Campagna. Here, clustering round the hill on which stood the far-famed "Temple of Fortune," lay the old Latin town of the Pr?nestians; a little farther westward was the settlement founded some thirty odd years before by Sulla as a colony. Farther out, and stretching off into the open country, lay the farmhouses and villas, gardens and orchards, where splendid nuts and roses, and also wine, grew in abundant measure.
A little stream ran close to the highway, and here an irrigating machine[1] was raising water for the fields. Two men stood on the treadmill beside the large-bucketed wheel, and as they continued their endless walk the water dashed up into the trough and went splashing down the ditches into the thirsty gardens. The workers were tall, bronze-skinned Libyans, who were stripped to the waist, showing their splendid chests and rippling muscles. Beside the trough had just come two women, by their coarse and unpretentious dress evidently slaves, bearing large earthen water-pots which they were about to fill. One of the women was old, and bore on her face all the marks which a life of hard manual toil usually leaves behind it; the other young, with a clear, smooth complexion and a rather delicate Greek profile. The Libyans stopped their monotonous trudge, evidently glad to have some excuse for a respite from their exertions.
[1] Water columbarium.
"Ah, ha! Chlo?," cried one of them, "how would you like it, with your pretty little feet, to be plodding at this mill all the day? Thank the Gods, the sun will set before a great while. The day has been hot as the lap of an image of Moloch!"[2]
[2] The Phoenician god, also worshipped in North Africa, in whose idol was built a fire to consume human sacrifices.
"Well, Hasdrubal," said Chlo?, the younger woman, with a pert toss of her head, "if my feet were as large as yours, and my skin as black and thick, I should not care to complain if I had to work a little now and then."
"Oh! of course," retorted Hasdrubal, a little nettled. "Your ladyship is too refined, too handsome, to reflect that people with black skins as well as white may get heated and weary. Wait five and twenty years, till your cheeks are a bit withered, and see if Master Drusus doesn't give you enough to make you tired from morning till night."
"You rude fellow," cried Chlo?, pouting with vexation, "I will not speak to you again. If Master Drusus were here, I would complain of you to him. I have heard that he is not the kind of a master to let a poor maid of his be insulted."
"Oh, be still, you hussy!" said the elder woman, who felt that a life of labour had spoiled what might have been quite the equal of Chlo?'s good looks. "What do you know of Master Drusus? He has been in Athens ever since you were bought. I'll make Mamercus, the steward, believe you ought to be whipped."
What tart answer Chlo? might have had on the end of her tongue will never be known; for at this moment Mago, the other Libyan, glanced up the road, and cried:--
"Well, mistress, perhaps you will see our master very soon. He was due this afternoon or next day from Puteoli, and what is that great cloud of dust I see off there in the distance? Can't you make out carriages and horsemen in the midst of it, Hasdrubal?"
Certainly there was a little cavalcade coming up the highway. Now it was a mere blotch moving in the sun and dust; then clearer; and then out of the cloud of light, flying sand came the clatter of hoofs on the pavement, the whir of wheels, and ahead of the rest of the party two dark Numidian outriders in bright red mantles appeared, pricking along their white African steeds. Chlo? clapped her little hands, steadied her water-pot, and sprang up on the staging of the treadmill beside Mago.
"It is he!" she cried. "It must be Master Drusus coming back from Athens!" She was a bit excited, for an event like the arrival of a new master was a great occurrence in the monotonous life of a country slave.
The cort��ge was still a good way off.
"What is Master Drusus like?" asked Chlo? "Will he be kind, or will he be always whipping like Mamercus?"
"He was not in charge of the estate," replied La?s, the older woman, "when he went away to study at Athens[3] a few years ago. But he was always kind as a lad. Cappadox, his old body-servant, worshipped him. I hope he will take the charge of the farm out of the steward's hands."
[3] A few years at the philosophy schools of that famous city were