diator Pollex,--'

'Hold, I say,' interrupted the prefect; 'a man witnesses not here of
himself. Can any one here say that this man is not crazy or drunk?'

'Varus! prefect Varus--' cried Macer, his eyes flashing lightning, and
his voice not less than thunder; but he was again interrupted.

'Peace, slave! or rods shall teach thee where thou art.' And at the same
moment, at a sign from Varus, he was laid hold of with violence by
officials of the place armed with spears and rods, and held.

'What I wish to know then,' said Varus, turning to the crowd, 'is,
whether this is not the street brawler, one of the impious Gallileans, a
man who should long ago have been set in the stocks to find leisure for
better thoughts?'

Several testified, as was desired, that this was he.

'This is all I wish to know,' said the prefect. 'The man is either
without wits, or they are disordered, or else the pestilent faith he
teaches has made the nuisance of him he is, as it does of all who meddle
with it. It is scarcely right that he should be abroad. Yet has he
committed no offence that condemns him either to scourging or the
prison. Hearken therefore, fellow! I now dismiss thee without the
scourging thou well deservest; but, if thou keep on thy wild and lawless
way, racks and dungeons shall teach thee what there is in Roman justice.
Away with him!'

'Romans! Roman citizens!' cried Macer; 'are these your laws and this
your judge?--'

'Away with him, I say!' cried the prefect; and the officers of the
palace hurried him out of the hall.

As he went, a voice from the crowd shouted,

'Roman citizens, Macer, are long since dead. 'Tis a vain appeal.'

'I believe you,' replied Macer; 'tyrant and slave stand now for all who
once bore the proud name of Roman.'

This violence and injustice on the part of Varus must be traced--for
though capricious, and imperious, this is not his character--to the
language of Macer in the shop of Publius, and to his apprehension lest
the same references to his origin, which he would willingly have
forgotten, should be made, and perhaps more offensively still, in the
presence of the people. Probus, on the former occasion, lamented deeply
that Macer should have been tempted to rehearse in the way he did some
of the circumstances of the prefect's history, as its only end could be
to needlessly irritate the man of power, and raise up a bitterer enemy
than we might otherwise have found in him.

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