Page:The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922), vol. 1.djvu/357

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PETRONIUS ARBITER
 

sleeps at night; or, if you do so seek, that you forfeit two hundred denarii immediately for each and every such offense.” The treaty was signed upon these terms, and we laid down our arms. It seemed well to wipe out the past with kisses, after we had taken oath, for fear any vestige of rancor should persist in our minds. Factious hatreds died out amidst universal good-fellowship, and a banquet, served on the field of battle, crowned our reconciliation with joviality. The whole ship resounded with song and, as a sudden calm had caused her to lose headway, one tried to harpoon the leaping fish, another hauled in the struggling catch on baited hooks. Then some sea-birds alighted upon the yard-arms and a skillful fowler touched them with his jointed rods: they were brought down to our hands, stuck fast to the limed segments. The breeze caught up the down, but the wing and tail feathers twisted spirally as they fell into the sea-foam. Lycas was already beginning to be on good terms

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