orners of the lips between the
parted upper and lower cheek-teeth. Therefore to close his jaws on his
victim the lion had to crush a roll or fold of his own lips. This
incredibly difficult feat prolonged his life a few breaths. The whole
populace howled in ecstasy at the wretch's coolness, courage, strength,
swiftness and adroitness.

The lion's momentum and weight bore Narcissus to the ground, but his
thumbs did not slip nor his hold loosen. On the sand lion and man rolled
and wrestled, for a brief time. Then the lion, lashing out with his hind
legs, caught with the claws of one the wrestler's belly and half
disemboweled him. Narcissus collapsed and the great fangs met in his
throat.

The populace redoubled their yells.

When silence fell, after the lion had been chased back into his cage and
the cage lowered down the lift-shaft, after the mangled corpse of
Narcissus had been dragged away and sand sprinkled to hide the red patches
where his blood had soaked it, I was haled forth and stood in the very
center of the arena. From his perch the herald proclaimed that I was
Phorbas, the slave of Pompeianus Falco of Carthage and Rome, who had
plotted his master's death in order sooner to gain freedom from his
testament, and had himself dealt Falco his deathblow. The populace jeered
and booed at me.

I had, as Festus the Animal-Tender, often viewed the interior of the
Colosseum from the arena. But never when I was myself the cynosure of all
eyes. There I stood, naked except for a loin-cloth, empty-handed, my
shoulder-brand and scarred back visible to half the spectators, glared at
and reviled. From my viewpoint the spectacle was singularly magnificent:
the dark blue sky overhead, varied by some large, solid-looking, white
clouds; the fluttering banners waving from the awning poles; the
particolored, sagging awning, shading half the audience; the beauty of the
upper colonnade under the awning; the solidly packed throng of spectators
which crowded the colonnade, the aisles, the steps and every seat in the
hollow of the amphitheater; the dignified ease of the nobility in their
spaced chairs, of the senators in their ample armchairs; the gorgeousness
of the Imperial Pavilion, filled with a retinue brilliant in blue and
silver, in green and gold, in white and crimson, about the hard, spare,
soldierly figure on the throne.

I was the only human being on the sand, eyed by all onlookers.

From a door in the _podium_-wall a fami