“By the god Belew!"[65] cried the enthusiastic Dumnorix.  “What a clever plan!  How the world will be cheated!  Ha! ha!  How sharp you little Greeks must be.  Only I must have fair return for my work, and an oath that the business shall never be coming to the point of giving my eyes to the crows.  I can’t risk my life in anything but a square fight.”

  [65] The Gallic sun-god.

“Well,” said Pratinas, after a few words with his companion, “how will this proposition suit you?  All expenses, before and after the affair itself, of course refunded; one hundred thousand sesterces clear gain for doing the deed, twenty-five thousand sesterces for every poor fellow we have to nail up to satisfy the law, and you to be guaranteed against any evil consequence.  Is this sufficient?”

“I think so,” growled Dumnorix, in his mustaches, “but I must have the oath.”

“The oath?” said Pratinas, “oh, certainly!” and the Greek raised his hands toward heaven, and muttered some words to the effect that “if he and his friend did not fulfil their oath, let Zeus, the regarder of oaths, destroy them,” etc., etc.—­an imprecation which certainly, so far as words went, was strong enough to bind the most graceless.  Then he proceeded to arrange with Dumnorix how the latter should wait until it was known Drusus had gone back to Praeneste, and was likely to stay there for some time; as to how many gladiators the lanista was to have ready.  Dumnorix complained that the rather recent law against keeping gladiators at Rome prevented him from assembling in his school any considerable number.  But out of his heterogeneous collection of Gauls, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks, and Asiatics he would find enough who could be used for the purpose without letting them know the full intent with which they were launched against Drusus.  At all events, if their testimony was taken, it would have to be as slaves on the rack; and if they accused their master of instigating them to riot, it was what any person would expect of such degraded and lying wretches.  So, after promising to come again with final word and some bags of earnest-money, Pratinas parted with the lanista, and he and Lucius Ahenobarbus found themselves again in the now entirely darkened Campus Martius.  Lucius again feared brigands, but they fell in with no unpleasant nocturnal wayfarers, and reached the city without incident.  Ahenobarbus seemed to himself to be treading on air—­Cornelia, villas, Drusus’s money—­these were dancing in his head in a delightful confusion.  He had abandoned himself completely to the sway of Pratinas; the Greek was omniscient, was invincible, was a greater than Odysseus.  Ahenobarbus hardly dared to think for himself as to the plan which his friend had arranged for him.  One observation, however, he made before they parted.

“You swore that Dumnorix should get into no trouble.  May it not prove expensive to keep him out of difficulty?”