sweet-scented meadows, and the twinkle of lamps from the still city, the
cry of the sentries about the walls, the wash of the tide filling the
river, and the salt savor of the sea. With such a scenic ornament he saw
the tale of Apuleius represented, heard the names of Fotis and Byrrhaena
and Lucius proclaimed, and the deep intonation of such sentences as _Ecce
Veneris hortator et armiger Liber advenit ultro_. The tale went on
through all its marvelous adventures, and Lucian left the amphitheatre
and walked beside the river where he could hear indistinctly the noise of
voices and the singing Latin, and note how the rumor of the stage mingled
with the murmur of the shuddering reeds and the cool lapping of the tide.
Then came the farewell of the cantor, the thunder of applause, the crash
of cymbals, the calling of the flutes, and the surge of the wind in the
great dark wood.

At other times it was his chief pleasure to spend a whole day in a
vineyard planted on the steep slope beyond the bridge. A grey stone seat
had been placed beneath a shady laurel, and here he often sat without
motion or gesture for many hours. Below him the tawny river swept round
the town in a half circle; he could see the swirl of the yellow water,
its eddies and miniature whirlpools, as the tide poured up from the
south. And beyond the river the strong circuit of the walls, and within,
the city glittered like a charming piece of mosaic. He freed himself from
the obtuse modern view of towns as places where human beings live and
make money and rejoice or suffer, for from the standpoint of the moment
such facts were wholly impertinent. He knew perfectly well that for his
present purpose the tawny sheen and shimmer of the tide was the only fact
of importance about the river, and so he regarded the city as a curious
work in jewelry. Its radiant marble porticoes, the white walls of the
villas, a dome of burning copper, the flash and scintillation of tiled
roofs, the quiet red of brickwork, dark groves of ilex, and cypress, and