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What say you, my lord Escanes, is not that hair worthy to be immortalised by a painter's hand?" And preceded by her lictors, who made a way for her through the crowd, Dea Flavia advanced even to the foot of the catasta.
But this is no place for the delivery of my judgment upon thee, and the sale must proceed as the law directs; thy daughter must stand upon the catasta, thou canst renew thy bid of twenty aurei for her, and," he added with unmistakable significance, as throwing his head back his imperious glance swept over the assembled crowd, "as there will be no higher bid for Nola, daughter of Menecreta, she will become thy property as by law decreed."
His voice was harsh and peremptory and he pronounced the Latin words with but the faintest semblance of foreign intonation. Now and then at a word from a likely purchaser he would with a sign order a lictor to pick out one of his wares, to drag him forward out of a compact group and set him up on the catasta.
She herself is mounted upon a sort of platform, called catasta, like that on which slaves were put up for sale. Two soldiers are by her, who appear to have been dragging her forwards. The executioners are also delineated, naked to the waist, with instruments of torture in their hands. The second document is a fragment of the Acta Proconsularia of her Passion.
The midday hour is almost on us. I have no further time to waste on thine affairs. Put the girl up on the catasta," he added, speaking in his usual harsh, curt way, "and take this woman's arms from round my shins." And it was characteristic of him that this time he did not interfere with his lictors when they handled the woman with their accustomed roughness.
Like some gigantic beast roused from noonday sleep, he straightened his massive frame and seemed suddenly to shake himself free from that state of torpor into which Dea Flavia's unexpected appearance had at first thrown him. He too, advanced to the foot of the catasta and there faced the imperious beauty, whom the whole city had, for the past two years, tacitly agreed to obey in all things.
She will betaken to Rome, and sold as a slave.... And in spite of a few discomforts in the transfer, and the prejudice which some persons have against standing an hour on the catasta to be handled from head to foot in the minimum of clothing, she will most probably end in being far better housed, fed, bedizened, and pampered to her heart's desire, than ninety-nine out of a hundred of her sister fleas.... till she begins to grow old.... which she must do in any case....And if she have not contrived to wheedle her master out of her liberty, and to make tip a pretty little purse of savings, by that time why, it is her own fault.
She may be unskilled now but she might learn providing that her health be good," he added with studied indifference. The latter phrase proved a cunning one. The few likely buyers who had been attracted to the catasta by the youthful appearance of the girl hoping to find willingness, even if skill were wanting now quickly drew away.
The crowd seemed inclined to wait just a brief while longer in order to see Nola put up on the catasta and to hear the bid of twenty aurei made for her by her mother a bid which, at the praefect's commands, was to be final and undisputed. Just to see the hammer come clashing down as an epilogue to the palpitating drama was perhaps worth waiting for.
"Grant me leave to escort thee to thy litter, Augusta!" murmured a timid voice. It was young Hortensius Martius who spoke. He had approached the catasta and now stood timid, and a suppliant, beside Dea Flavia, with his curly head bare to the scorching sun and his back bent in slave-like deference.
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