looked as if at this moment it would be ill-advised to try jesting with
him. But in the universal uproar only a few had heard his words, and the
hot-blooded tailor was so rash as to lay his hand on the praetor's girdle
in order to drag him away from the door with the help of his comrades.
But he paid dearly for his temerity for the praetor's fist fell so
heavily on his forehead that he dropped as if struck by lightning. One
of the Britons knocked down the sausage-maker and a hideous hand to hand
fight would have been the upshot if help had not come to the hardly-beset
Romans from two quarters at once. The veterans supported by a number of
lictors were the first to appear, and soon after them came Benjamin, the
Jew's eldest son, who was passing down the great thoroughfare with his
boon-companions and saw the danger that was threatening his father's
house.

The soldiers parted the throng as the wind chases the clouds, and the
young Israelite pressed forward with his heavy thyrsus fought and pushed
his way so valiantly and resolutely through the panic-stricken mob, that
he reached the door of his father's house but a few moments later than
the soldiers. The lictors battered at the door and as no one opened it,
they forced it with the help of the soldiers in order to set a guard in
the beleaguered house, and protect it against the raging mob.

Verus and the officer entered the Jew's dwelling with the armed men, and
behind them came Benjamin and his friends--young Greeks with whom he was
in the habit of consorting daily, in the bath or the gymnasium.
Apollodorus and his guests expressed their gratitude to Verus, and when
the old Jewish house-keeper, who had seen and heard from a hiding-place
under the roof all that had taken place outside her master's house, came
into the men's hall and gave a full report of the uproar from beginning
to end, the praetor was overwhelmed with thanks; and the old woman