Marius the Epicurean (Penguin Classics)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ...like the waves of the sea--the cool circle of shadow, in which the wonderful toilets of the beau monde told so effectively around the blazing arena, recovered, at intervals, during the many hours' show with clean sand for absorbing certain great red patches there, by troops of white-shirted boys, for whom the goodnatured audience provided a scramble of nuts and small coin, flung to them over a trellis-work of amber and silver gilt, the precious gift of Nero; while a rain of flowers and perfume fell over themselves, as they paused, between the parts of their long feast upon animal suffering. During his sojourn at Ephesus, Lucius Verus had readily become a patron, or proUgi, of the great goddess of Ephesus, the goddess of hunters; and the show, celebrated by way of a compliment to him to-day, was to present some incidents of her story, in which she figures almost as the genius of madness, in animals, or in the humanity which comes in contact with them. The spectacle would have an element of old Greek revival in it, welcome to the taste of a learned and Hellenising society; and, as Lucius Verus was in some sense a lover of animals, was to be a show of animals, mainly. There would be real wild and domestic creatures, all of rare species; and a real slaughter. On so happy an occasion, the elder emperor might even concede a point, and a living criminal fall into the jaws of the wild beasts. And the entire spectacle was, certainly, to end in the destruction, by one mighty shower of arrows, of a hundred lions, "nobly" provided by Aurelius himself for the amusement of his people--tam magnanimus fuit! The arena, disposed and decked for the first scene, looked delightfully fresh, reinforcing on the spirits of the audience the actual freshness of the...