ard his friend
Emilius with a quiet smile. 'Thrice already have I told him the truth of
the matter, and still he persists; well knowing that, if now he can
scarcely sustain himself from falling over into the area below, he
certainly could not, three hours ago, have been able to tell what play
he made, or whether he made any play at all. Nay, Bassus, it was only of
the male slaves that I spoke.'

'Yet listen to me,' insisted the comedian, placing his hand upon the
other's shoulder and leaning heavily upon him, 'You do not deny that we
gamed?'

'Of a surety I do not.'

'Nor that I won money of you?'

'Ten sestertia. I acknowledge it.'

'Nay, twenty sestertia, was it not?'

'Twenty sestertia be it, then. What matters the amount, when I paid you
upon the moment, and you now have the sum, whatever it may be, in your
own purse?'

'True, true,' rejoined the other, nodding his head with an air of sage
gravity; 'whatever it was, of a certainty I now have it. And then,
Sergius, you offered against the ten--no, the twenty sestertia--to play
the choice of all your new slaves.'

'Of my new male slaves, certainly.'

'No, of the slaves both male and female. I will tell you how it is that
I so especially recollect. It was because I had heard from our lawgiver
here about the beautiful Samian girl you have borne home among your
share of the spoils. You did not think, perhaps, that I knew of her; but
when I offered to throw the dice, I held her in my mind. And then, when
I had won, and told you that I would select her, you said--'

'Exactly what I had said to you before, that you could take your choice
from the male slaves,' interrupted the other impatiently. 'And I have
brought you directly hither to make your selection, for fear that when
you became sober you would forget the matter altogether, and thereby
cheat yourself out of a fairly won prize. Am I not right, comrades? Was
not the play as I have stated it?'

'Neither more nor less,' the poet answered; and the tribune and the
praetorian captain spoke to the same effect. The comedian still looked
unconvinced, and, for the moment, gazed inquiringly from one to the
other, in the hope that some newer recollection would come to the mind
of either of them and lead to a recantation. But in that desire he was
disappointed, and at last he reluctantly gave up the contest, not daring
to protract it longer for fear of provoking a quarrel, and thereby being
thrust out of the societ