Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
You, you are that man; you and none other, for as soon as I feel you by my side I find it difficult to do what I know to be wrong. Here I am, Pontius! Will you have me with all my moods, with all my faults and weaknesses?" "Balbilla!" cried the architect, beside himself with heartfelt agitation and surprise, and he pressed her hand long and fervently to-his lips. "You will? You will take me?
Balbilla and her companion, Publius Balbinus and other illustrious Romans, Favorinus the sophist, and a numerous suite of chamberlains and servants, were to accompany the Empress by water, while Hadrian set forth on his land journey with a small escort to which he added a splendid array of huntsmen.
Ask the tall sculptor there behind the screens, at what hour Balbilla is to sit to him for her bust. We must also inspect the architect's work, and that of the Alexandrian artists by daylight; that, their zeal has well deserved."
No sooner were the two ladies alone, than Balbilla rose and looked inquisitively round and about the sculptor's enclosed work-room; but her companion said: "A very polite young man, this Pollux, but rather too much at his ease, and too enthusiastic."
He had only to-day met Balbilla for the first time, but he had heard from Titianus that she was staying at the Caesareum with the Empress, and the prefect had also told him that she was the granddaughter of that same governor, Claudius Balbillus, who had granted freedom to his own grandfather, a learned Greek slave.
When the prefect came up to Verus, a young girl, whose pretty head was crowned by a perfect thicket of little ringlets, was just laying her hand on his arm and saying: "Nay-that is too much; if you go on like this, for the future whenever you speak I shall stop my ears with my hands, as sure as my name is Balbilla." "And as sure as you are descended from King Antiochus," added Verus bowing.
As he went out into the hall again, Pollux hurried up to meet him, exclaiming: "The Roman architect wants to speak to you, he is a grand man!" "Balbilla was called away, and bid me greet you," replied Pontius. "Take that thing away for fear she should see it. It is coarse and hideous."
"I hate the idea of being conspicuous by my appearance," answered Balbilla. "It is precisely by following the fashion, however conspicuous it may be, that we are less remarkable than when we carefully dress far more simply and plainly in short, differently to what it prescribes.
Still; in her secret heart, she could not but confess to herself that her high-spirited and wilful foster-child for so she loved to call Balbilla would undoubtedly have carried out her purpose without the Empress' intervention. Balbilla had come to the palace, as the reader knows, to sit for her bust.
This thing is an insult in clay, malicious, and at the same time coarse in every detail; but it was not Pollux who did it, and it is not right to condemn without a trial." "You take your friend's part!" exclaimed Balbilla. "I would not tell a lie for my own brother." "You know how to give your words the aspect of an honorable meaning in serious matters, as he does in jest."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking