Also they began to show signs of being restless and bored. Some yelled for
another criminal.
A seventh lion was loosed at me. He paused like the others and eyed me;
then he strolled up to me, snuffed at me, and rubbed his mane against my
hip, emitting a rambling purr. I laid my hand on his mane.
Instantly, from all sides at once, rang out cries of,
"Festus!"
"Festus the Beast-Wizard!"
"He's no Phorbas, he's Festus come back!"
I was not far from the Imperial Pavilion and one of the retinue leaned
over the _podium_-coping and called to me. I walked towards him. When I
was within earshot he called in Greek:
"The King commands that you lead the beasts back to their cages."
Elated and hoping for a reprieve, for vindication, for life, for
rehabilitation, for Imperial favor, I led beast after beast back to its
cage on a shaft-lift, or to a door in the wall. When the last one was
caged an officer of the Imperial retinue, a frontiersman only lately come
to Rome, stepped out of one of the postern doors, two arena-slaves with
him. They led me to the center of the arena, trussed my hands behind me,
bound my ankles and wrapped round my head an evil-smelling old quilt,
probably taken from the cot of some arena-slave housed in some cell under
the hollow of the amphitheater.
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