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According to his story, he was as well informed as if he had been an eye- witness of the naval battle; for he had been present during his master's conversation with many ship-captains and messengers from Greece. He even assumed the air of a loyal, strictly silent servant, who would only venture to confirm and deny what the Alexandrians had already learned.
The appearance, in short, of this false philosopher was not calculated to subdue the rash tongues of the Alexandrians. To this many of them agreed; still, there was no time for such reflections till the dust had shrouded the chariot, which vanished as quickly as it had come, till the shouting was stilled, and the crowd had spread over the roadway again.
After Pollux had hurried past this strange party his thoughts reverted to other, and to him far nearer and dearer subjects. But Mastor's anxious looks were not without a cause, for the gentleman who was talking to him was no less a person than Verus, the praetor, who was called by the Alexandrians the sham Eros.
There, on marble benches, spread with colored cushions, at the rear under the balcony, the richer men of business sat chattering to mask their real thoughts Jews, Alexandrians, Athenians a Roman here and there, cupidity more frankly written on his face, his eyes a little harder and less subtle, more abrupt in gesture and less patient with delays.
The fate of the town, which had ventured to thwart the plans of the master of the world and had brought him within a hair's-breadth of destruction, lay in Caesar's hands; but he was too much of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots.
The Alexandrians could have had no love for a son of Caracalla; Basilianus and Secundus had before declared against him; but, on the other hand, the choice of the soldiers was guided by their brethren in Syria.
But it was no good reason with the Alexandrians, who declared that he had not been chosen according to the canons of the apostles; and the magistrates of the city were forced to employ the troops to lead him in safety to his throne. After the first ceremony, he went, as was usual at an installation, to St. Mark's Church, and there the clergy robed him in the patriarchal state robes.
Greek gaiety, and the quick intellect and keen wit of the Alexandrians, combined with the choicest viands of the luxurious capital, where the wines and dainties of all the countries of the Mediterranean found sellers and buyers, and the cook's vocation was developed into a fine art, to spice this banquet with a hundred charms for the mind and senses.
But the fat king, as Euergetes was called by the Alexandrians, and, following their example, by all the rest of Egypt, was not just then thinking of Chloe, nor of any such person; he was in the bath attached to his splendidly fitted residence. Divested of all clothing, he was standing in the tepid fluid which completely filled a huge basin of white marble.
It seemed unlikely after the Alexandrians had made such poor attempts at standing upright under the immensity of Homer; it seemed so, until, after several efforts, Latin poetry became triumphantly epic in Virgil. And again, when the mystical prestige of Virgil was domineering everything, regular epic seemed unlikely; until, after the doubtful attempts of Boiardo and Ariosto, Tasso arrived.
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