He, if any one, must know what the feelings of those unhappy creatures were.
"Do I not know!" he exclaimed, with a shake of the head.

Then, glancing round at the few persons who were sitting at the other end of the boat, he went on sadly: "To know that, a man must himself have been branded with the marks of his humiliation." He showed her his arm, which was usually hidden by the long sleeve of his tunic, and Melissa exclaimed in sorrowful surprise: "But you were free-born! and none of our slaves bear such a brand.

You must have fallen into the hands of Syrian pirates." He nodded, and added, "I and my father." "But he," the girl eagerly put in, "was a great man." "Till Fate overtook him," Andreas said.
Melissa's tearful eyes showed the warm sympathy she felt, as she asked: "But how could it have happened that you were not ransomed by your relations?
Your father was, no doubt, a Roman citizen; and the law--" "The law forbids that such a one should be sold into slavery," Andreas broke in, "and yet the authorities of Rome left him in misery--left--" At this, her large, gentle eyes flashed with indignation, and, stirred to the depths of her nature, she exclaimed: "How was such horrible injustice possible?
Oh, let me hear.

You know how truly I love you, and no one can hear you." The wind had risen, the waves splashed noisily against the broad boat, and the song of the slaves, as they plied their oars, would have drowned a stronger voice than the freedman's; so he sat down by her side to do her bidding.
And the tale he had to tell was sad indeed.
His father had been of knightly rank, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius he had been in the service of Avidius Cassius, his fellow-countryman, the illustrious governor of Asia as 'procurator ab epistolis'.

As holding this high post, he found himself involved in the conspiracy of Avidius against the emperor.