against me to the end of my days in Rome, in the provinces, everywhere.
I shall be cursed for your crime wherever there is a human heart to throb
and feel, and a human tongue to speak. And I--when did I ever order you
to slake your thirst for blood in that of the sick and suffering? Never!
I could never have done such a thing! I even told you to spare the
women and helpless slaves. You are all witnesses, But you all hear me--
I will punish the murderer of the wretched sick! I will avenge you,
foully murdered, brave, noble Tarautas!--Here, lictors! Bind him--away
with him to the Circus with the criminals thrown to the wild beasts! He
allowed the girl whose life I bade him spare to be burned to death before
his eyes, and the hapless sick were slain at his command by a beardless
boy!--And Tarautas! I valued him as I do all who are superior to their
kind; I cared for him. He was wounded for our entertainment, my friends.
Poor fellow--poor, brave Tarautas!"

He here broke into loud sobs, and it was so unheard-of, so
incomprehensible a thing that this man should weep who, even at his
father's death had not shed a tear, that Julius Paulinus himself held
his mocking tongue.

The rest of the spectators also kept anxious and uneasy silence while the
lictors bound Zminis's hands, and, in spite of his attempts to raise his
voice once more in self-defense, dragged him away and thrust him out
across the threshold of the dining-hall. The door closed behind him,
and no applause followed, though every one approved of the Egyptian's
condemnation, for Caracalla was still weeping.

Was it possible that these tears could be shed for sick people whom he
did not know, and for the coarse gladiator, the butcher of men and
beasts, who had had nothing to give Caesar but a few hours of excitement