The tablets would now settle the question; and side by side the two women hastily read the missive which Philostratus had written on the wax, in his fine, legible hand.  It was as follows: 

“The condemned have ceased to live.  Your efforts had no effect but to hasten their end.  Caesar’s desire was to rid you of adversaries even against your will.  Vindex and his nephew are no more; but I embarked soon enough to escape the rage of him who might have attained the highest favors of fortune if he had but known how to be merciful.”

“God be praised!—­but alas, poor Vindex!” cried Euryale, as she laid down the tablets.  But Melissa kissed her, and then exclaimed to her brother: 

“Now all doubts are at an end.  I may fly.  He himself has settled the matter!”

Then she added, more gently, but still urgently “Do you take care of my father, and Philip, and of yourself.  The lady Euryale will protect me.  Oh, how thankful am I!”

She looked up to heaven with fervent devotion Euryale whispered to them:  “My plan is laid.  As soon as the performance is over, Alexander shall take you home, child, to your father’s house; you must go in one of Caesar’s chariots.  Afterward come back here with your brother; I will wait for you below.  But now we will go together to the Circus, and can discuss the details on our way.  You, my young friend, go now and order away the imperial litter; bid my steward to have the horses put to my covered harmamaxa.  There is room in it for us all three.”

By the time Alexander returned, the daylight was waning, and the clatter of the chariots began to be audible which conveyed Caesar’s court to the Circus.

CHAPTER XXVII.

The great Amphitheatre of Dionysus was in the Bruchium, the splendid palatial quarter of the city, close to the large harbor between the Choma and the peninsula of Lochias.  Hard by the spacious and lofty rotunda, in which ten thousand spectators could be seated, stood the most fashionable gymnasia and riding-schools.  These buildings, which had been founded long since by the Ptolemiac kings, and had been repeatedly extended and beautified, formed, with the adjoining schools for gladiators and beast-fighters, and the stables for wild beasts from every part of the world, a little town by themselves.

At this moment the amphitheatre looked like a beehive, of which every cell seems to be full, but in which a whole swarm expects yet to find room.  The upper places, mere standing-room for the common people, and the cheaper seats, had been full early in the day.  By the afternoon the better class of citizens had come in, if their places were not reserved; and now, at sunset, those who were arriving in litters and chariots, just before the beginning of the show, were for the most part in Caesar’s train, court officials, senators, or the rich magnates of the city.