“I have a prisoner,” he said, “who might be Norbanus.  He has been tortured.  He refused to identify himself.”

“Does he look like him?”

“That would be difficult to say.  He broke into a jeweler’s and was very badly beaten by the slaves, who slashed his face, which is heavily bandaged.  He appears to be a Roman and is certainly a thief, but beyond that—­”

“Much depends on who is interested in him,” Pertinax suggested.  “Usually a man’s relatives—­”

But the governor of Antioch’s fat hand made a disparaging careless gesture.  “He has no friends.  He has been in the carceres (the cells in which prisoners were kept who had been sentenced to death.  Under Roman law there was practically no imprisonment for crime.  Fines, flogging, banishment were the substitutes for execution.) more than a month.  I was reserving him for execution by the lions at the next public games.  Truth to tell, I had almost forgotten him.  I will write out a warrant for Norbanus’ execution and it shall be attended to this morning.  And by the way—­regarding the Olympic games—­”

“The emperor, I think, would like to see them held in Antioch,” said Pertinax.

The merchants strolling to the baths stood curiously for a while to watch one of the rapidly increasing sect of Christians, who leaned from a balcony over the street and exhorted a polyglot crowd of freedmen, slaves and idlers.  He was bearded, brown-skinned from exposure, brown-robed, scrawny, vehement.

“Peculiar times!” one merchant said.  “If you and I should cause a crowd to gather while we prated about refusal to do homage to the gods—­of whom mind you, the emperor is one, and not the least—­”

“But let us listen,” said the other.

The man’s voice was resonant.  He used no tricks of oratory such as Romans over-valued, and was not too careful in the choice of phrases.  The Greek idiom he used was unadorned—­the language of the market-place and harbor-front.  He made his points directly, earnestly, not arguing but like a guide to far-off countries giving information: 

“Slaves—­freedmen—­masters—­all are equal before God, and on the last day all shall rise up from the dead—­”

A loiterer heckled him: 

“Hah!  The crucified too?—­what about Maternus?”

The preacher, throwing up his right hand, snatched at opportunity: 

“There were two thieves crucified, one on either hand, as I have told you.  To the one was said:  ’This day shalt thou be with me in paradise’; but to the other nothing.  Nevertheless, all shall rise up from the dead on the last day—­you, and your friends, and the wise and the fools, and the slave and the free—­aye, and Maternus also—­”

One merchant grinned to the other: 

“Yet I think it was on the first night that Maternus rose up!  They stiffen if they stay a whole night on the cross.  If he could walk to Daphne three nights later, he had not been crucified many hours.  Come, let us go to the baths before the crowd gets there.  If one is late those insolent attendants lose one’s clothing, and there is no chance whatever of getting a good soft-handed slave to rub one down.  Don’t you hate to be currycombed by a rascal with corns on his fingers?”