"Do you believe there are any ?" "Do you ?" retorted Lucius, feeling all the time that a deadly temptation had hold of him, which he could by no means resist.
"Why ?" said the Greek.

"Your Latin Ennius states my view, in some of your rather rough and blundering native tetrameters.

He says:-- "'There's a race of gods in heaven; so I've said and still will say.
But I deem that we poor mortals do not come beneath their sway.
Otherwise the good would triumph, whereas evil reigns to-day.'" "And you advise ?" said Ahenobarbus, leaning forward with pent-up excitement.
"I advise ?" replied Pratinas; "I am only a poor ignorant Hellene, and who am I, to give advice to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, a most noble member of the most noble of nations!" If Pratinas had said: "My dear Lucius, you are a thick-headed, old-fashioned, superstitious Roman, whom I, in my superior wisdom, utterly despise," he would have produced about the same effect upon young Ahenobarbus.
But Lucius still fluttered vainly,--a very weak conscience whispering that Drusus had never done him any harm; that murder was a dangerous game, and that although his past life had been bad enough, he had never made any one--unless it were a luckless slave or two--the victim of bloodthirsty passion or rascality.
"Don't propose it," he groaned.

"I don't dare to think of such a thing! What disgrace and trouble, if it should all come out!" "Come, come, Ahenobarbus," thrust in Marcus Laeca, who had been educated in Catilina's school for polite villains and cut-throats.
"Pratinas is only proposing what, if you were a man of spirit, would have been done long ago.

You can't complain of Fortune, when she's put a handsome estate in your hands for the asking." "My admirable fellow," said Pratinas, benevolently, "I highly applaud your scruples.