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Updated: June 15, 2025
Pratinas is loose and has been raising heaven and earth to get at us. There is a crier going the rounds of the Forum offering a thousand sesterces for the return of Artemisia. Pratinas has gone before the triumviri capitales and obtained from them an order on the apparitores to track down the runaway and her abettor." One of their functions made these officers practically chiefs of police.
Artemisia disappeared in the next room. Agias returned to his prisoner. Pratinas was coughing and twisting, and trying to ejaculate oaths. "My good sir," said Agias, "I am not a bloodthirsty man, otherwise I would cut your throat, and so let you forget a predicament which doubtless embarrasses you not a little.
"Yes," said Valeria, with a sigh, "I endure the woes of life as should one who is consoled by philosophy." "Shall I continue the Plato?" edged in poor Pisander, who was raging inwardly to think that Pratinas should dare to assume the name of a "lover of learning." "When you are needed, I can tell you," snapped Valeria, sharply, at the feeble remonstrance. "Now, Semiramis, you may arrange my hair."
And while the servant bustled briskly about his work, Pratinas, for such was his lord's name, continued his monologue, ignoring the presence of his attendant. "Not so bad with me after all. Six years ago to-day it was I came to Rome, with barely an obol of ready money, to make my fortune by my wits. Zeus! But I can't but say I've succeeded.
"The niece of Pratinas!" exclaimed Agias, settling himself upon the cushions in a manner that indicated his intention to make a prolonged stay; "and does Pratinas keep his pretty niece shut up in a gloomy tenement, when she has the voice of one of the Graces, and more than their share of beauty! Shame on him; I thought he had better sense than that!"
He was as pale as white linen, and quaking like a blade of grass in the wind, the very antithesis of the splendid Ares of the fight on the mole. "Your name is Pratinas?" began Cæsar, with the snappish energy of a man who discharges a disagreeable formality.
"Imperator," he said, "Agias this morning dragged from off the mole with him into the water one of the most dangerous men in the councils of our enemies. I mean, as you know, Pratinas the Greek. He is now in the palace prison, but every one is aware that, so long as he so much as lives, we are hardly safe. What shall be done?" Cæsar frowned.
Finally, in a low, half-audible tone, he told of the provisional arrangements with Dumnorix, and how very soon the plan was to be put in execution. "And you must be sure and tell me," cried Valeria, clapping her hands when Pratinas concluded, "what the details of the affair all are, and when and how you succeed. Poor Quintus Drusus! I am really sorry for him.
Down over Pratinas's head dashed the broad linen folds of the toga, and two muscular arms drew it tight around the neck. Then began the struggle. Pratinas was of powerful physique, and resisted like a madman. The carpet was torn to shreds, the chairs shivered. But Agias, too, battled for grim life.
Drusus had left him in the city when he started for Ravenna, with general instructions to keep an eye on Lucius Ahenobarbus and Pratinas, and also to gather all he could of the political drift among the lower classes. Agias was free now.
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