"Somtow Sucharitkul - Aquila" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sucharitkul Somtom)

a few border commands; saw action in Britain, when the Picts
came down on Eburacum, and again against some recalcitrant
barbarians on the Dacian border....
After a while I was noticed by the Divine Domitian; and it
was on the very day that the Emperor granted Roman citizenship
to all the barbarians of Terra Nova, and awarded himself the title
of Pater Maximus Candidusque, or White and Greatest Father,
that he also honored me with the command of the Thirty-fourth
Legion.


CHAPTER II




TITUS, OLD CHAP," THE EMPEROR SAID TO ME, "have
I conquered anything lately?"
We were ensconced in the Imperial Box at the Circus;
Domitian was choking on a pickled lark's tongue with laughter
over some lions who were making mincemeat of a bunch of
recalcitrant Judaeans. His favorite, a peculiar-looking dwarf with
an enormous head and staring eyes, sat at his feet.
"Well," I said, feeling very silly to be out of uniform and
having long since lost interest in the sight of gore, "there's not
much of the world left, Your Magnificence. West of Lacotia,
perhaps, in Terra Nova—"
"Boring, boring, boring, you silly general. Those savages are
fierce, and they certainly put on a spectacle in the arena, though I
suppose you haven't seen any of the new shows, being out in the
backwaters quelling Visigoths and Picts."
"True, my lord, but—"
"I want spectacle, Titus!" The crowd was roaring now as the
slaves with meathooks dragged the corpses out through the gates
of death. A lone lion straggled. Domitian clapped his pudgy
hands; a bow and arrow was handed him on a silver platter. He
waved for silence, and it fell just like that, twenty thousand
people gulping in mid-sentence. "I haven't had an interesting
spectacle since... last year, when I had Amazons in motor-cars
fighting pygmies on bicycles."
"Yes, where are the motor-cars these days, my Lord? I
haven't seen a single one since I got back from the campaign."
"Shush, shush, old chap." He clambered up onto the seat of
his throne and transfixed the lion in the neck with a single shot.
The crowd burst out in carefully rehearsed spontaneous cheering.
He sat down as they began to flood the arena for a mock
sea-battle. "Ah yes, the motor-cars—I used them all up in the one
circus show, Titus, and the priests of Jove haven't deigned to
cough up another one."
"And how's Epaminondas of Alexandria?" I said pointedly.