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I still mourned for Agathemer, but I did not miss him as acutely as I had in the ergastulum. After about ten days in the woodland glades I brought my charges back to the villa for inspection, according to orders. The inspector was pleased with their condition and commended me. Some of the fellow-herdsmen, off duty, stood or sat about and they seemed to approve.
Satiety had begotten a chronic callousness and even savagery that showed itself, not merely in the now familiar use of the ergastulum and the brand, but in arbitrary and cruel punishments which were part of the programme of almost every day. His wife Megallis, hardened by the same influences, was the torment of her maidens and of such domestics as were more immediately under her control.
"I don't expect you to tell me," he laughed, "but I could not help asking; you are such a wonder that I am tormented with the desire to know all about you, not merely where you came from and how you got into the ergastulum at Nuceria. But I shall not press you for any information about yourself. Keep your own secrets as long as you are willing to work miracles for me.
It was the voice of the slaves in the ergastulum. Some soldiers rose at a bound to release them and disappeared. They returned, driving through the dust amid shouts, twenty men, distinguished by their greater paleness of face. Small black felt caps of conical shape covered their shaven heads; they all wore wooden shoes, and yet made a noise as of old iron like driving chariots.
Bring him in, and let him explain it himself," said Sergius in a sulky voice. The patience of the Patrician was at an end. "Speak this instant, you rascal!" he shouted angrily. "Another minute, and I will have you dragged to the ergastulum, where, with your feet in the stocks and the gyves round your wrists, you may learn quicker obedience. Speak, I say, and without delay."
Some of Hamilcar's sailors had picked him up when at the point of death, and had brought him to the ergastulum of Megara, at Carthage. But, as fugitives were to be given back to the Romans, he had taken advantage of the confusion to fly with the soldiers.
After the three new centuries were thus constituted, they asked them to decide whether they would accept as comrades and associates the residue of the inmates of our ergastulum who were marked plainly as runaway slaves. They voted overwhelmingly to accept us. Then the three new sergeants proceeded to choose us also into their centuries.
As a result the ergastulum was entered by the town guards, rigorously searched by the aldermen and their apparitors, under the aldermen's eyes, all the sawn bars, files, knives, daggers and swords discovered, the suspected men tortured till the ring-leaders were identified, the dictator and his senators flogged and manacled, and the management of the ergastulum renovated.
They entered through the hedge of jujube-trees, beating down the branches with blows of the dagger. The traces of the feast of the Mercenaries were everywhere still manifest. The parks were broken up, the trenches drained, the doors of the ergastulum open. No one was to be seen about the kitchens or cellars.
That is why I applied for the post of trainer in this beastly ergastulum. It is bad enough to have to endure the gloom of men virtually condemned to death and looking for a chance to kill themselves, but it is better than treading the sand to have one's liver split, one's throat cut, and be dragged out with the hooks. I have fought many a fight, but I liked each one less than the last."
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