Some monks, Herse explained, had followed them on the road hither, had snatched Dada's lyre from the slave who was carrying it and pulled the wreath out of her hair.

Damia was furious as she heard it, and trembled with rage as she railed at the wild hordes who disgraced and desecrated Alexandria, the sacred home of the Muses; then she began to speak once more of the young captain, Mary's son, to whom the troupe of singers owed their lives.
"Marcus," said she, "is said to be a paragon of chastity.

He races in the hippodrome with all the gallants of the town and yet--if it is true it is a miracle--he shuns women as though he were a priest already.

His mother is very anxious that he should become one; but he, by the grace of Aphrodite, is the son of my handsome Appelles, who, if he had gazed into those blue eyes all the way from Rome to Alexandria, would have surrendered at mercy; but then he would also have conquered them--as surely as I hope to live till autumn.

You need not blush so, child.
After all, Marcus is a man like other men.