stretched arms, raised his eyes
with entreaty, as if to say,--

"Have mercy on her! Save the maiden. I did that for her sake!"

The spectators understood perfectly what he wanted. At sight of the
unconscious maiden, who near the enormous Lygian seemed a child, emotion
seized the multitude of knights and senators. Her slender form, as white
as if chiselled from alabaster, her fainting, the dreadful danger from
which the giant had freed her, and finally her beauty and attachment had
moved every heart. Some thought the man a father begging mercy for his
child. Pity burst forth suddenly, like a flame. They had had blood,
death, and torture in sufficiency. Voices choked with tears began to
entreat mercy for both.

Meanwhile Ursus, holding the girl in his arms, moved around the arena,
and with his eyes and with motions begged her life for her. Now Vinicius
started up from his seat, sprang over the barrier which separated the
front places from the arena, and, running to Lygia, covered her naked
body with his toga.

Then he tore apart the tunic on his breast, laid bare the scars left by
wounds received in the Armenian war, and stretched out his hands to the
audience.

At this the enthusiasm of the multitude passed everything seen in a
circus before. The crowd stamped and howled. Voices calling for mercy
grew simply terrible. People not only took the part of the athlete, but
rose in defense of the soldier, the maiden, their love. Thousands of
spectators turned to Caesar with flashes of anger in their eyes and with
clinched fists.

But Caesar halted and hesitated. Against Vinicius he had no hatred
indeed, and the death of Lygia did not concern him; but he preferred to
see the body of the maiden rent by the horns of the bull or torn by the
claws of beasts. His cruelty, his deformed imagination, and deformed
desires found a kind of delight in such spectacles. And now the people
wanted to rob him. Hence anger appeared on his bloated face. Self-love
also would not let him yield to the wish of the multitude, and still he
did not dare to oppose it, through his inborn cowardice.

So he gazed around to see if among the Augustians at least, he could
not find fingers turned down in sign of death. But Petronius held up
his hand, and looked into Nero's face almost challengingly. Vestinius,
superstitious but inclined to enthusiasm, a man who feared ghosts
but not the living, gave a sign for mercy also. So did Scevinus, the
Senator; s