Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FIFTH 2. Chapter II (continued)

'Look to him,' said the aedile; 'he has done his duty!'

The officers dragged him off to the spoliarium.

'A true type of glory, and of its fate!' murmured Arbaces to himself, and his eye, glancing round the amphitheatre, betrayed so much of disdain and scorn, that whoever encountered it felt his breath suddenly arrested, and his emotions frozen into one sensation of abasement and of awe.

Again rich perfumes were wafted around the theatre; the attendants sprinkled fresh sand over the arena.

'Bring forth the lion and Glaucus the Athenian,' said the editor.

And a deep and breathless hush of overwrought interest, and intense (yet, strange to say, not unpleasing) terror lay, like a mighty and awful dream, over the assembly.