But he had scarcely finished speaking, when his opponent, the praetor, Lucius Priscillianus, observed, with a gravity he but rarely displayed: "I should have thought that it was the first duty of the man who ought to be Caesar's mainstay and representative here, to let his sovereign hear nothing but the undistorted truth.

Nothing, it seems to me, can be less excusable than a lie told to divine Caesar's face!" A few courtiers, who were out of the prefect's favor, as well as the high-priest of Serapis, agreed with the speaker.

Caracalla, however, paid no heed to them, but sat with his eyes fixed on the door, deeply wounded in his vanity by the mere existence of such a caricature.
He had not long to wait.

But when the wrapper was taken off the clay figures, he uttered a low snarl, and his flushed face turned pale.
Sounds of indignation broke from the bystanders; the blood rose to his cheeks again, and, shaking his fist, he muttered unintelligible threats, while his eyes wandered again and again to the caricatures.

They attracted his attention more than all else, and as in an April day the sky is alternately dark and bright, so red and white alternated in his face.