Some Lacedaemonians, who had not taken off their cuirasses, were leaping with a heavy step.

Some advanced like women, making obscene gestures; others stripped naked to fight amid the cups after the fashion of gladiators, and a company of Greeks danced around a vase whereon nymphs were to be seen, while a Negro tapped with an ox-bone on a brazen buckler.
Suddenly they heard a plaintive song, a song loud and soft, rising and falling in the air like the wing-beating of a wounded bird.
It was the voice of the slaves in the ergastulum.

Some soldiers rose at a bound to release them and disappeared.
They returned, driving through the dust amid shouts, twenty men, distinguished by their greater paleness of face.

Small black felt caps of conical shape covered their shaven heads; they all wore wooden shoes, and yet made a noise as of old iron like driving chariots.
They reached the avenue of cypress, where they were lost among the crowd of those questioning them.

One of them remained apart, standing.