Page:The Children's Plutarch, Romans.djvu/107

 Then the Red General seized a wooden eagle from a standard-bearer, and pushed his way through the runners, crying:

“Yonder, Romans, is the bed of honor I am to die in! When you are asked where you deserted your general, mind you say it was here!”

These words roused a sense of shame in his men. They rallied to his support, and the struggle ended in another victory for the soldiers of the republic. Soon Greece was free from the power of Mithridates, and he was fain to make peace.

Sulla suffered from the gout, and he betook himself to a hot spring, the waters of which were said to have a healing effect; and there he bathed his swollen feet, and lived lazily for a while, and sported with his dancers and buffoons.

When on his march to the shores of the Adriatic Sea, on his return to Italy, he passed a place where the grass and trees were of a most beautiful green. And here was brought to the Red General a most peculiar-looking person—a Wild Man of the Woods—who had been found asleep on the ground.

“This is a satyr,” said the people, who led the strange creature to Sulla.

A satyr (sat-ir) was often carved by the old Greek sculptors. They made him appear as a mischievous-looking man, with a pug nose, curly hair, ears with pointed tips like goats' ears, and