ory,
ostrich feathers, spices, and perfumes for the rich of the city, were
distinguished by their majestic step, their tunics with flowers and
birds embroidered in gold, their green buskins, their tall embroidered
tiaras, and their beards falling over their breasts, curled so as to lie
in horizontal waves. The Greeks laughed and talked incessantly, jesting
over their business affairs, and overwhelming with volubility the grave,
bearded, diffident Iberian exporters dressed in coarse wool, who, with
their silence seemed to protest against the stream of useless words.

The wharves were deserted one after another, the life of the place
flowing along the road toward the city. Horses galloped, raising clouds
of dust, chariots rolled along, and little African donkeys passed with a
short trot, bearing on their backs some corpulent citizen or other,
seated like a woman.

The Greek walked slowly along the mole behind two men clad in short
tunics, wearing buskins and little conical hats with drooping brims,
like those of the Hellenic shepherds. They were two artisans from the
city. They had spent the day fishing, and were returning to their
houses, gazing with ill dissimulated pride at their baskets in which
writhed and wriggled barbels and eels. They were talking in Iberian,
frequently mixing Greek and Latin words in their conversation. It was a
not unusual dialect in that ancient colony, which was in continual
contact through commerce with the principal peoples of the earth. The
Greek, as he followed them down the wharf listened to their conversation
with the curiosity of a stranger.

"You will come in my cart," said one of them. "My donkey awaits me at
Abiliana's inn. The beast as you know is the envy of all my neighbors.
We shall yet reach the city before the gates are closed."

"I thank you, neighbor. It is not prudent to travel alone when the
country is swarming with adventurers whom we take as hirelings for the
wars with the Turdetani, and all the people who fled from the city after
the last revolt. Day before yesterday, as you know, the dead body of
Acteio, the barber of the Forum, was found in the road. He was
assassinated and robbed as he was returning from his little
country-house at night-fall."

"They say that we shall live more tranquilly now since the Roman
intervention. The legates from Rome have ordered a few heads cut off;
and they affirm that after this we shall have peace."

The two men stopped a moment