allum and gaping fossa girdled them round, and gave them safe refuge
against a night attack. Then in noisy, laughing, gesticulating crowds
they gathered in their thousands round the grassy arena where the sports
were to be held. A long green hill-side sloped down to a level plain,
and on this gentle incline the army lay watching the strife of the
chosen athletes who contended before them. They stretched themselves in
the glare of the sunshine, their heavy tunics thrown off, and their
naked limbs sprawling, wine-cups and baskets of fruit and cakes circling
amongst them, enjoying rest and peace as only those can to whom it comes
so rarely.

The five-mile race was over, and had been won as usual by Decurion
Brennus, the crack long-distance champion of the Herculians. Amid the
yells of the Jovians, Capellus of the corps had carried off both the
long and the high jump. Big Brebix the Gaul had out-thrown the long
guardsman Serenus with the fifty pound stone. Now, as the sun sank
towards the western ridge, and turned the Harpessus to a riband of
gold, they had come to the final of the wrestling, where the pliant
Greek, whose name is lost in the nickname of "Python," was tried out
against the bull-necked Lictor of the military police, a hairy Hercules,
whose heavy hand had in the way of duty oppressed many of the
spectators.

As the two men, stripped save for their loincloths, approached the
wrestling-ring, cheers and counter-cheers burst from their adherents,
some favouring the Lictor for his Roman blood, some the Greek from their
own private grudge. And then, of a sudden, the cheering died, heads were
turned towards the slope away from the arena, men stood up and peered
and pointed, until finally, in a strange hush, the whole great assembly
had forgotten the athletes, and were watching a single man walking
swiftly towards them down the green curve of the hill. This huge
solitary figure, with the oaken club in his hand, the shaggy fleece
flapping from his great shoulders, and the setting sun gleaming upon a
halo of golden hair, might have been the tutelary god of the fierce and
barren mountains from which he had issued. Even the Emperor rose from
his chair and gazed with open-eyed amazement at the extraordinary being
who approached them.

The man, whom we already know as Theckla the Thracian, paid no heed to
the attention which he had aroused, but strode onwards, stepping as
lightly as a deer, until he reached the fringe of