To complete the figure it should be added that on one finger he wore a large ring set with a very beautiful seal of an armed Venus; and over his loose but carefully arranged tunic was thrown a short, red mantle, caught together on the left shoulder--the paludamentum, a garment only worn by Roman military officers of the very highest rank.
The general--for so his dress proclaimed him--was playing with a stylus and a waxen tablet, while the young Greek read.

Now and then he would bid the latter pause while he made a few notes.

The book was Euripides's "Troades." "Read those lines again," interrupted the general.

The voice was marvellously flexile, powerful, and melodious.
And the freedman repeated:-- "Sow far and wide, plague, famine, and distress; Make women widows, children fatherless; Break down the altars of the gods, and tread On quiet graves, the temples of the dead; Play to life's end this wicked witless game And you will win what knaves and fools call Fame!"[122] [122] Translated in the collection "Sales Attici." The freedman waited for his superior to ask him to continue, but the request did not come.

The general seemed lost in a reverie; his expressive dark eyes were wandering off in a kind of quiet melancholy, gazing at the glass water-clock at the end of the room, but evidently not in the least seeing it.
"I have heard enough Euripides to-day," at length he remarked.