He was especially gracious to the high-priest, whom he bade to a place by his side; and he even accepted his arm as a support, when, the meal being over, they returned to the tablinum.

’There he flung himself on a couch, with a burning head, and began feeding the lion, without paying any heed to his company.  It was a pleasure to him to see the huge brute rend a young lamb.  When the remains of this introductory morsel had been removed and the pavement washed, he gave the “Sword of Persia” pieces of raw flesh, teasing the beast by snatching the daintiest bits out of his mouth, and then offering them to him again, till the satiated brute stretched himself yawning at his feet.  During this entertainment, he had a letter read to him from the senate, and dictated a reply to a secretary.  His eyes twinkled with a tipsy leer in his flushed face, and yet he was perfectly competent; and his instructions to the senate, though imperious indeed, were neither more nor less rational than in his soberest moods.

Then, after washing his hands in a golden basin, he acted on Macrinus’s suggestion, and the two candidates who had so long been waiting were at last admitted.  The prefect of the praetorians had, by the Magian’s desire, recommended the Egyptian; but Caesar wished to see for himself, and then to decide.  Both the applicants had received hints from their supporters:  the Egyptian, to moderate his rigor; the Greek, to express himself in the severest terms.  And this was made easy for him, for the annoyance which had been pent up during his three hours’ waiting was sufficient to lend his handsome face a stern look.  Zminis strove to appear mild by assuming servile humility; but this so ill became his cunning features that Caracalla saw with secret satisfaction that he could accede to Melissa’s wishes, and confirm the choice of the high-priest, in whose god he had placed his hopes.

Still, his own safety was more precious to him than the wishes of any living mortal; so he began by pouring out, on both, the vials of his wrath at the bad management of the town.  Their blundering tools had not even succeeded in capturing the most guileless of men, the painter Alexander.  The report that the men-at-arms had seized him had been a fabrication to deceive, for the artist had given himself up.  Nor had he as yet heard of any other traitor whom they had succeeded in laying hands on, though the town was flooded with insolent epigrams directed against the imperial person.  And, as he spoke, he glared with fury at the two candidates before him.

The Greek bowed his head in silence, as if conscious of his short-comings; the Egyptian’s eyes flashed, and, with an amazingly low bend of his supple spine, he announced that, more than three hours since, he had discovered a most abominable caricature in clay, representing Caesar as a soldier in a horrible pygmy form.

“And the perpetrator,” snarled Caracalla, listening with a scowl for the reply.