"The council is about to sit, and I must be at the foot of the steps awaiting orders. Go, Actæon, and tarry for me in the Forum. There you will find my boy. Did you not say that you met him on the road? No doubt he was with that slave girl who herds Sónnica's goats. Don't hesitate, Actæon; don't tell a falsehood. I guess it. Ah, that boy! That vagabond, who, instead of working, races through the fields like a fugitive slave!"
In spite of the grievousness with which the archer complained, a thrill of tenderness was observable in his accent, the note of preference over his other sons for that wandering and capricious artist who often abandoned the paternal roof to roam about the port and through the mountains for weeks at a time.
The two Greeks bade each other adieu, and Actæon returned to the Forum, not without thinking that he saw again, strolling about the Acropolis, the mysterious Celtiberian shepherd. As he entered the porticos he heard hisses and shouting; the crowds were agitated, laughing and jeering; people rushed from the barber-shops and perfumeries. The Greek saw a group of luxuriously dressed young men passing with scornful smiles regardless of the tempest of hisses and sarcasm raised by their presence.
They were the gallants of Saguntum; the rich youths who imitated the fashions of the Athenian aristocracy, exaggerated by distance and by their lack of taste. Actæon also smiled, with the cynical smile of an Athenian, as he observed the crudeness with which these young fops copied their distant models.
At their head strode Lachares, the gallant who had accompanied Sónnica on her morning visit to the temple of Venus. They were dressed in transparent cloth of screaming colors and subtle weave, disclosing the body, like the tunics worn by the hetæræ at banquets. Their cheeks, carefully plucked free of hair, were tinted with soft vermilion and the eyes were enlarged with black lines. The hair, curled, and perfumed with fragrant ointments, was confined by a fillet. Some wore large hoops of gold in their ears, and hidden bracelets jingled as they walked. Others were indolently leaning on the shoulders of small slave boys with white backs, and with hair hanging in heavy curls, resembling girls in the plumpness of their forms. As if deaf to the insults and sarcasms of the people, they talked with affected serenity of some Greek verses which one of them had composed; they discussed their merit, the manner of accompanying them with the lyre, and only stopped to caress the cheeks of their small slaves or to greet acquaintances, well pleased at heart over the scandal their presence caused in the Forum.