against the world!' shouted others.' 'The conqueror of Egypt
forever!--long live the great Zabdas!' rose from every quarter. It were in
vain to attempt to remember or write down half the violent things which in
this hour of madness were uttered. The games were for a long time
necessarily suspended, and the whole amphitheatre was converted into an
arena of political discussion, from which arose the confused din of
unnumbered voices, like the roar of the angry ocean. I looked at Zenobia;
she was calm--satisfied. Pride was upon her lip and brow. So like a god
was the expression of her whole form, that for a moment I almost wished
her mistress of the world. She seemed worthy to reign. Julia was
evidently sad, and almost distressed; Longinus, impenetrable as marble;
Zabdas, black and lowering as night.

Quiet was at length restored, and the games went on.

A messenger came now from the Queen to our seat, with the request that
Fausta should join her, not being satisfied with the distant intercourse
of looks and signs, So, accompanied by Gracchus, she was soon placed by
the side of Zenobia, whose happiness seemed doubled by the society of, I
believe, her choicest friend. Left now to myself, I had leisure to think
and to observe. A more gorgeous show than this vast assembly presented, I
think I never before beheld--no, not even in the Flavian. Although in Rome
we seem to draw together people of all regions and all climes, yet after
all the North and West preponderate, and we lack the gayer costumes which
a larger proportion of these Orientals would add to our spectacles. Not to
say too, that here in the East the beauty of woman is more transcendent,
and the forms of the men cast in a finer mould. Every variety of
complexion is here also to be seen, from the jet black of the slender
Ethiopian, to the more than white of the women of the Danube. Here I saw
before me, in one promiscuous throng, arrayed in their national dresses,