When Dromo returned with my garments and I was clad as Phorbas, Corbulo
questioned me as to when Falco had bought me, where and from whom. To my
relief he did not ask me how Rufius Libo had acquired me. He did ask my
age, but nothing else concerning my past. As to my life with Falco in
Africa and at Rome, he questioned me closely. I told him all about Falco's
character, his gem-collecting, the effect on him of the murders of
Commodus and Pertinax, his forebodings and his utterances to me about his
will. When he felt that he knew all I had to tell along these lines, he
said:
"Now tell me your version of your master's death."
He heard me out and said:
"I believe you. You speak like a truth-teller."
He then questioned the janitor, who babbled and cringed, half
unintelligibly, but stoutly denying that he had slept at his post on the
seventh day before the Kalends of July.
"I am of the opinion," said Corbulo, drily, "that you are lying."
Then to his apparitors he said:
"Strip him."
The court-slave, the charcoal-tender, stood up off his folded blanket and
shook it out. The janitor, stripped and bound, ankles lashed, hands
trussed behind him, was haled towards the brazier. The blanket was flung
round him and four apparitors lifted him as if he had been a log and held
him near the brazier, the enveloping blanket drawn tight over his left
thigh and its outer underside nearest the coals, tilting him sideways to
bring the soft thickness of the thigh closest to the heat.
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