But as seen through the
mists of intoxication, their fatigues seemed to them prodigious and but
ill-rewarded. They showed one another their wounds, they told of their
combats, their travels and the hunting in their native lands. They
imitated the cries and the leaps of wild beasts. Then came unclean
wagers; they buried their heads in the amphoras and drank on without
interruption, like thirsty dromedaries. A Lusitanian of gigantic stature
ran over the tables, carrying a man in each hand at arm's length, and
spitting out fire through his nostrils. Some Lacedaemonians, who had not
taken off their cuirasses, were leaping with a heavy step. Some advanced
like women, making obscene gestures; others stripped naked to fight amid
the cups after the fashion of gladiators, and a company of Greeks danced
around a vase whereon nymphs were to be seen, while a Negro tapped with
an ox-bone on a brazen buckler.
Suddenly they heard a plaintive song, a song loud and soft, rising and
falling in the air like the wing-beating of a wounded bird.
It was the voice of the slaves in the ergastulum. Some soldiers rose at
a bound to release them and disappeared.
They returned, driving through the dust amid shouts, twenty men,
distinguished by their greater paleness of face.
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