Licinius had served in the East, and he bethought him now of a nation against whom he had stood in arms, brave fierce soldiers, men instinct with public virtue and patriotism; whose rites, different from those of all other races, were observed with scrupulous fidelity and self‐denial. This people, he had heard, worshipped a God of whom there was no material type, whose being was omnipresent and spiritual, on whom they implicitly depended when all else failed, and trusting in whom they never feared to die. But they admitted none to partake with them in their advantages, and their faith seemed to inculcate hatred of the stranger no less than dissensions and strife amongst themselves.
“Is there nothing, alas! but duty, stern cold duty, to fill this void?” thought Licinius. “Be it so, then; my sword shall be once more at the service of my country, and I will die in my harness like a Roman and a soldier at the last!”
Hippias, the fencing‐master, had completed his preparations for the night. With a certain military instinct, as necessary to his profession as to that of the legitimate soldier, he could rely upon his own dispositions, when they were once made, with perfect confidence, and a total absence of anxiety for the result. Like all men habituated to constant strife, he was never so completely in his element as when surrounded by perils, only to be warded off by cool, vigilant courage; and though he may have had moments in which he longed for the softer joys of affection and repose, it needed but the clang of a buckler, or the gleam of a sword, to rouse him into his fiercer self once more.
It had been his habit to attend Valeria, for the purpose of instructing her in swordsmanship, by an hour’s practice on certain appointed days. Everything connected with the amphitheatre possessed at this period such a morbid fascination for all classes of the Roman people, that even ladies of rank esteemed it a desirable accomplishment to understand the use of the sword; and it is said that on more than one occasion women of noble birth had been known to take part in the deadly games themselves. These, however, were rare instances of such complete defiance of all modesty and even natural feeling; but to thrust, and shout, and stamp, in the conflict of mimic warfare, was simply esteemed the regular exercise and the healthy excitement of every patrician dame who aspired to a fashionable reputation. Such sudorifics, accompanied by excessive use of the bath and a free indulgence in slaking the thirst, arising from so severe a course of treatment, must have been highly detrimental to female beauty; but even this consideration was postponed to the absorbing claims of fashion, and then, as now, a woman was content and pleased to disfigure herself by any process, however painful and inconvenient, providing other women did the same.