catasta

As the auctioneer started on his peroration those among the crowd who were here for business, and not for idle gaping, turned back towards the catasta.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

My lord was smiling, so the auctioneer prattled on, and the deformed creature upon the catasta wound his ill-shapen body into every kind of contortion, grinning from ear to ear, displaying the malformation of his spine, and the hideousness of his long hairy arms, whilst he uttered weird cries that were supposed to imitate those of wild animals in the forest.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

The few likely buyers who had been attracted to the catasta by the youthful appearance of the girl -- hoping to find willingness, even if skill were wanting -- now quickly drew away.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

The crowd seemed inclined to wait just a brief while longer in order to see Nola put up on the catasta and to hear the bid of twenty aurei made for her by her mother -- a bid which, at the praefect's commands, was to be final and undisputed.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

Dea Flavia advanced even to the foot of the catasta.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

He too, advanced to the foot of the catasta and there faced the imperious beauty, whom the whole city had, for the past two years, tacitly agreed to obey in all things.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

He had approached the catasta and now stood timid, and a suppliant, beside Dea Flavia, with his curly head bare to the scorching sun and his back bent in slave-like deference.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

She had listened from a respectful distance, and with the humble deference born of years of bondage, to the honeyed words with which the great lady deigned to cajole a girl-slave: but when Dea Flavia had finished speaking and the chorus of admiration had died down around her, the freedwoman, with steps which she vainly tried to render firm, approached to the foot of the catasta and stood between the great lady and her own child.

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906

Put the girl up on the catasta, "he added, speaking in his usual harsh, curt way," and take this woman's arms from round my shins. "

"Unto Caesar" Emmuska Orczy Orczy 1906