“The people must sleep badly under the ward of such a coward.  Let him follow the prefect, noble Caesar.”

“Send him his dismissal at once,” said Caracalla; “but see that his successor is a man.”

He then turned to the high-priest, and politely requested him to assist Theocritus in choosing a new head for the town-guard, and Timotheus and the favorite quitted the room together.

Philostratus took ingenious advantage of the incident, by at once informing the emperor that it had come to his knowledge that this coward, so worthily dismissed from office, had, on the merest suspicion, cast into prison a painter who was undoubtedly one of the first of living artists, and with him his guiltless relations.

“I will not have it!” Caesar broke out.  “Nothing but blood will do any good here, and petty aggravations will only stir their bile and increase their insolence.  Is the painter of whom you speak an Alexandrian?—­I pine for the open air, but the wind blows the rain against the windows.”

“In the field,” the philosopher remarked, “you have faced the weather heroically enough.  Here, in the city, enjoy what is placed before you.  Only yesterday I still believed that the art of Apelles was utterly degenerate.  But since then I have changed my opinion, for I have seen a portrait which would be an ornament to the Pinakothek in your baths.  The northern windows are closed, or, in this land of inundations, and in such weather as this, we might find ourselves afloat even under cover of a roof; so it is too dark here to judge of a painting, but your dressing-room is more favorably situated, and the large window there will serve our purpose.  May I be allowed the pleasure of showing you there the work of the imprisoned artist?”

Caesar nodded, and led the way, accompanied by his lion and followed by the philosopher, who desired an attendant to bring in the picture.

In this room it was much lighter than in the audience-chamber, and while Caracalla awaited, with Philostratus, the arrival of the painting, his Indian body-slave, a gift from the Parthian king, silently and skillfully dressed his thin hair.  The sovereign sighed deeply, and pressed his hand to his brow as though in pain.  The philosopher ventured to approach him, and there was warm sympathy in his tone as he asked: 

“What ails you, Bassianus?  Just now you bore all the appearance of a healthy, nay, and of a terrible man!”

“It is better again already,” replied the sovereign.”  And yet—!”

He groaned again, and then confessed that only yesterday he had in the same way been tortured with pain.