made. Caligula's insomnia-maddened brain was fertile with expedients for making law submit to his caprices; he had fifty laws he could have cited, passed by a servile senate and forgotten until Caesar chose to use them. It would add to his enjoyment to torture them, master and slave, in each other's presence, if that might lawfully be done. But Vulpes saved that moment for them all, intending nothing of the kind.
He rose and flung himself at Caesar's feet. He groveled. He offered money. Utterly losing his head, he vowed he would reveal the names of plotters against Caesar's life. He would surrender his estates and all his wealth to Caesar—"
"They are mine already," Caesar answered, stroking his leopard and licking his lips.
"But not the lions, Caesar—not the lions!"
There was possibly remaining in Caligula some remnant of appreciation for a manly attitude, some measure of contempt for cowardice. More probably a sense of drama lingered in his mad mind. Contrast stirred in him sardonic humor. And he may have thought of the political advantage to himself, of glutting the eyes of the Roman mob with the sight of a beautiful woman and two men of rank done shamefully to death in the arena.
"To the lions with them—all three! Drag that fool out! Secretary—where is that slow drudge? Write the order—make haste—all three to the carceres—for treason—to be toen by lions in the next games."
CHAPTER IX
"Which way do you like death?"
Gaius Ruber, the lanista, was a man whose charity was tempered by the obvious responsibilities of his profession, and by his own cupidity, which was no less obvious. His wintry-blue eyes were too close-set to be those of a generous man; and, commonly with executioners and jailers of all times, it was not a soft heart that had earned him his peculiar distinction. He had seen too many die to care a clipped as for the rank, sex, guilt or innocence of victims. But his pay was nothing much and, under Caligula, he did not always get it; so, within extremely rigid limits set by knowledge that the last lanista had been beaten to death by Caligula's order for permitting prisoners to escape, he was not above persuasion if it took the form of something he could use for money.
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"How do you propose to pay me?"
Down in the reeking darkness of the dungeons underneath the Circus, Maximus Cleander spoke with him through the small iron grating of a cell door. There was a fire, in a brazier, at the end of the stone passage, but that was not for
