From the hopefulness of this gracious presence, all visible things around him, even the commonest objects of everyday life--if they but [235] stood together to warm their hands at the same fire--took for him a new poetry, a delicate fresh bloom, and interest.

It was as if his bodily eyes had been indeed mystically washed, renewed, strengthened.
And how eagerly, with what a light heart, would Flavian have taken his place in the amphitheatre, among the youth of his own age! with what an appetite for every detail of the entertainment, and its various accessories:--the sunshine, filtered into soft gold by the vela, with their serpentine patterning, spread over the more select part of the company; the Vestal virgins, taking their privilege of seats near the empress Faustina, who sat there in a maze of double-coloured gems, changing, as she moved, like the waves of the sea; the cool circle of shadow, in which the wonderful toilets of the fashionable told so effectively around the blazing arena, covered again and again during the many hours' show, with clean sand for the absorption of certain great red patches there, by troops of white-shirted boys, for whom the good-natured audience provided a scramble of nuts and small coin, flung to them over a trellis-work of silver-gilt and amber, precious gift of Nero, while a rain of flowers and perfume fell over themselves, as they paused between the parts of their long feast upon the spectacle of animal suffering.
During his sojourn at Ephesus, Lucius Verus had readily become a patron, patron or protege, [236] of the great goddess of Ephesus, the goddess of hunters; and the show, celebrated by way of a compliment to him to-day, was to present some incidents of her story, where she figures almost as the genius of madness, in animals, or in the humanity which comes in contact with them.

The entertainment would have an element of old Greek revival in it, welcome to the taste of a learned and Hellenising society; and, as Lucius Verus was in some sense a lover of animals, was to be a display of animals mainly.

There would be real wild and domestic creatures, all of rare species; and a real slaughter.
On so happy an occasion, it was hoped, the elder emperor might even concede a point, and a living criminal fall into the jaws of the wild beasts.

And the spectacle was, certainly, to end in the destruction, by one mighty shower of arrows, of a hundred lions, "nobly" provided by Aurelius himself for the amusement of his people .-- Tam magnanimus fuit! The arena, decked and in order for the first scene, looked delightfully fresh, re-inforcing on the spirits of the audience the actual freshness of the morning, which at this season still brought the dew.