The Emperor — Volume 01 by Georg Ebers
page 46 of 67 (68%)
page 46 of 67 (68%)
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Empress's chamberlain. "He has named them after the winds."
"As they deserve," added Verus "Come, Titianus." He laid his hand in a confidential manner on the arm of the prefect, to whom he was related; and as they went towards Sabina he whispered in his ear: "I can keep her waiting as if I were the Emperor." Favorinus who had been engaged in talk with Ptolemaeus, the astronomer, Apollonius, and the philosopher and poet Pancrates in another part of the hall, looked after the two men and said: "A handsome couple. One the personification of imperial and dignified Rome; the other with his Hermes-like figure." "The other"--interrupted the philologist with stern displeasure, "the other is the very incarnation of the haughtiness, the luxury pushed to insanity, and the infamous depravity of the metropolis. That dissipated ladies-man." "I will not defend his character," said Favorinus in his pleasant voice, and with an elegance in his pronunciation of Greek which delighted even the grammarian. "His ways and doings are disgraceful; still you must allow that his manners are tinged with the charm of Hellenic beauty, that the Charites kissed him at his birth, and though, by the stern laws of virtue we must condemn him, he deserves to be crowned with praise and garlands from the point of view of the feeling for beauty." "Oh! for the artist who wants a model he is a choice morsel." |
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