this palatial residence. And here again one single speech had sufficed
to excite their fury.

In the first instance Melampus, the tanner, a drunken swaggerer, who had
failed in business, had marched up the street at the head of a tipsy
crew, and pointing with his thyrsus to the dark, undecorated house, had
shouted:

"Look at that dismal barrack! All that the Jew used to spend on
decorating the street, he is saving up now in his money chest!"
The words were like a spark among tinder and others followed.

"The niggard is robbing our father Dionysus," cried a second citizen,
and a third, flourishing his torch on high, croaked out:

"Let us get at the drachmae he grudges the god; we can find a use for
them." Graukus, the sausage maker, snatched from his neighbor's hand the
bunch of tow soaked in pitch, and bellowed out, "I advise that we should
burn the house over their heads!"

"Stay, stay," cried a cobbler who worked for Apollodorus' slaves, as he
placed himself in the butcher's way. "Perhaps they are mourning for some
one in there. The Jew has always decorated his house on former
occasions."

"Not they," replied a flute-player in a loud hoarse voice. "We met
the old miser's son on the Bruchiom with some riotous comrades and
misconducted hussies, with his purple mantle fluttering far behind him."

"Let us see which is reddest, the Tyrian stuff or the blaze we shall