"I have lain awake night after night," I replied, "composing letters to Vedia and to you, letters which would tell you what I wanted if, by good luck, they came into your hands, but which, if they fell into the hands of secret-service agents, would tell nothing and not so much as arouse enough suspicion to cause them to investigate me and take a look at me. I could not frame, to my satisfaction, even one such letter. I knew that any messenger I employed would most likely post off to some Imperial spy and show him my letter before he took it to its destination or instead of delivering it. I canvassed every possible messenger, from my personal servitor here in the Choragium, through all the slaves I knew here or in the Colosseum who are free to run about the city, up to every sort of street-gamin, idler, loafer, sycophant and what not. I could not think of any kind of messenger who would be safe, nor of any letter which would not be dangerous. Much as I wanted to apprise Vedia of my survival I could not but feel that any attempt on my part to communicate with her or with you would lead straight to betrayal, detection, recognition and the death from which Agathemer saved me."

"I believe you were right," Tanno agreed. "It has all come out for the best. You are alive and unsuspected and I have found you."

"How did you find me?" I queried.

"Galen," he said, to my astonishment, "told me that you were sheltered in the Choragium, cloaked under the style and title of Festus the Beast- Tamer. He said he recognized you last fall, but did not judge it wise to give me or Vedia so much as a hint as long as you were busy in the arena in full view of all Rome on festival days and under the eyes of our entire nobility during our Prince's exhibitions of himself as Hercules Delirans. When Commodus abruptly realized that beast-killing might not suit his health because of the opportunities it gave for accidentally letting lions or tigers or what not out of their cages at unexpected moments, since he was not likely to revert to his renounced sport and you were not likely to be so much in demand and therefore less likely to be much under observation, Galen thought it safe to tell me. He says he has always believed that you had nothing to do with Egnatius Capito's conspiracy, had merely been seen by some secret-service agent while talking to Capito, never were a member of his conspiracy, never conspired against Commodus, never were disloyal, have never been and are not any danger to our Prince, and therefore are a man to be shielded rather than informed on. So he kept his face when he recognized you in the arena masquerading as Festus and kept his counsel till he judged the time ripe to tell me.

"I at once told Vedia, in person and privately. She is overjoyed, and, just as her encounter with you on the Flaminian Road not only stopped her proposed marriage to Orensius Pacullus, but made her feel she never wanted to hear of him again, so your resurrection and reappearance now has spoiled an apparently prosperous wooing of her by Flavius Clemens, who is as good a fellow as lives; noble, rich, handsome, charming and just such a suitor as Vedia might and should have married if you were really dead, and one she could not, in any case, help flirting with. She must have admiration, attention and admirers. With all her love of gaiety she loves you unalterably."

"I infer," I said, "that she told you of our encounter on the Flaminian Way."

"She did," he answered, "and gave me a full report of your story of your adventures from Plosurnia's Tavern till she saw you. As soon as we conferred we both started to use all our influence and any amount of cash necessary (we both have cash to spare, hoards of it) to arrange for your legal manumission by the fiscus, your disappearance, and your comfort in some secure shelter until it might be safe for you to reappear as yourself in your proper station in society.

"We found we should have no difficulty in arranging for your manumission. It has already been favorably reported on the recommendation of the authorities of Nuceria. We had only to slip a small bribe or two to expedite matters. But when we sent off a dependable agent, armed with all the necessary papers, to set you free from your captivity on the Imperial estate, and provide you with plenty of cash to make everything smooth for your disappearance, he was confronted with a most circumstantial story of your assassination and burial, with the official reports of both and the affirmation of an upper inspector who had investigated the matter.

"We could not but think you dead in fact and Vedia was as heartbroken as five years ago, if not more so, for the glamour of that romantic encounter with you was magical. I believed you dead and was astounded when Galen gave me his information. Vedia is as amazed as I."

After some mutual desultory chat he fell to questioning me about my adventures and, drinking and eating when the humor took us, we spent most of the day together, I rehearsing for him all that I had told Vedia and much more in detail and also telling of all which had befallen me since then.

When Tanno left, it was as late as he could possibly remain and yet reach the Baths of Titus in time for the briefest bath there.

Next day he came again.

By this time both he and I had had time to think over the situation and to arrive at definite conclusions as to what was best to do. I was delighted to find that his ideas and mine agreed as to all essentials.

When he first came in he said:

"I had mighty little sleep last night. I could hardly close my eyes for thinking over your marvellous adventures. The more I ponder over them the more wonderful they seem; especially your involvement with Maternus; your encounter with Pescennius Niger; your presence in the Circus Maximus when Commodus:—I mean Palus:—drove his car over the axles of the stalled chariots and escaped between them out of the smash and wreckage; your involvement with the mutineers, and your safety in Rome all these months, even in the arena of the amphitheater. I congratulate you."

Then he told me his plan which he had already talked over with Vedia and which she approved. There happened to be in Rome a distinguished and wealthy provincial of senatorial rank, about to leave for Africa, where his estates were situated and where he owned vast properties near Carthage, Hippo Regius, Hadrumetum, Lambaesis and Thysdrus, in all of which places he had residences of palatial proportions and luxury. He had been making enquiries among his acquaintances for a slave much of the sort Agathemer had been to me. He had not found one to suit him. Tanno thought that I would suit him and could easily pass myself off as the sort of man he wanted. Then I would get out of Rome unsuspected and be comfortable and well treated in the most Italian of all our out-provinces, in a delightful climate, amid abundance of all the good things of life.

I agreed with him.

Then he disclosed his plan for bringing this about. By influence or bribing or both he would arrange to have me sold out of the Choragium, ostensibly as now superfluous there, and to have me bought from the fiscus by a dependable and close-mouthed go-between buyer, who would agree to hold me for quick resale to a purchaser designated by Tanno. Thus Nonius Libo, the wealthy provincial who was to be induced to purchase me, would know nothing of my identity with Festus the Animal Tamer or of my connection with the Choragium.

I acclaimed this project, as far more promising than Vedia's plan to seclude me in the dreary wilds of Bruttium.

Tanno gave me a letter and went off. I found the missive a long and loving letter from Vedia: one to soothe and transport any lover.

Tanno had said that he would not visit me again except as was absolutely needful, considering it reckless and venturesome to run the risk of some Imperial spy noticing his visits to the Choragium and making investigations. Though he remarked that no man in Rome seemed less likely than he to be suspected of disloyalty, intrigue or of being a danger to the Prince.

Within a very few days he paid me one more visit to inform me that everything had gone well, that all necessary arrangements had been made for my sale by the fiscus out of the Choragium, and all necessary preparations made to take full advantage of it.

A few days later I was formally sold for cash to a provincial slave- dealer, named Olynthides. In a slave-barrack which he had hired for the month only I found myself with a motley crew, but kept apart from them and comfortably lodged, well fed and considerately treated, as valuable merchandise.

The day after Olynthides had bought me Nonius Libo came to inspect me. He talked to me in Latin and in Greek, commended my fluency and polish in the use of both, had me write out a letter in each at his dictation, read both and commended my accuracy, script and speed; questioned me about the history of music, painting, and sculpture and as to my opinions on the works of various sculptors, painters, architects and composers; asked about my tastes along these lines and as to jewelry, fine furniture, tapestries, carpets and the like; also as to my personal tastes concerning lodging, bathing, hunting, food and clothing and was I a good sailor and fond of the sea; and stated that I suited him.

I was not present at his chaffering with Olynthides but, after no long interval I was summoned into the courtyard and Olynthides handed me over to Nonius Libo, along with a bill of sale.



CHAPTER XXXII

PHORBAS

Olynthides had said to me:

"I make it a point always to forget the names of the slaves I buy for cash without any guarantees and resell the same way. I have as bad a memory for names as any man alive and I help my bad memory to be as much worse as I can. I'll forget your name in a few days. I am not sure I remember it now. What is it?"

I was ready for him, for I had made up my mind to change my name again and had selected my new name.

"Phorbas" I answered.

"Oh, yes!" he ruminated, "Phorbas, to be sure. I should have said Florus or Foslius or something like that. Phorbas! I'll remember Phorbas till after you are sold and the cash in my hands and you and your new master out of sight. Then I'll forget that too, like all the rest."

As Phorbas, Phorbas the Art Connoisseur, I began my life with Nonius. He was domiciled in a palace of a residence on the Carinae, which he had leased for the short term of his proposed stay in Rome. There I was lodged in a really magnificent apartment, with a private bath, a luxurious bedroom, a smaller bedroom for the slave detailed to wait on me, a tiny triclinium and a jewel of a sitting-room, gorgeous with statuettes and paintings, crammed with objects of art and walled with a virtuoso's selection of the best books of the best possible materials and workmanship.

There I spent some happy days. Nonius had told me I might go out all I pleased. I had replied that I preferred to remain indoors until we set out for Carthage. He smiled, nodded and said:

"I understand: do as you like."

I passed my time most agreeably, except for several intrusions by Libo's wife, Rufia Clatenna. She was a tall, raw-boned, lean woman, with unmanageable hair which would not stay crimped, a hatchet face, too much nose and too little chin, a stringy neck, very large, red, knuckly hands and big flat feet. She had a mania for economy and close bargains, seemed to regard her husband as an easy mark for swindlers and to be certain that he had been cheated when he bought me. She thought herself an art-expert, whereas she had no sound knowledge of any branch of art, no memory for what she had heard and seen, and no taste whatever. To demonstrate that her husband had made a bad bargain when he bought me she bored me with endless questions concerning the contents of her domicile, of which she understood almost nothing, and concerning famous composers, painters, sculptors and architects, as to whom she confused the few names, dates and works she thought she knew about.

Nonius came on us in his atrium while she was putting me through a questionnaire on every statue, painting and carving in it. The first time he saw me alone he said, smiling:

"You mustn't mind her; I put up with her, you can, too."

When he came into my apartment and told me he meant to set off from Rome next day, I ventured to express my puzzlement that he had bought me and never mentioned to me, since I came into his possession, any of the subjects on which he had questioned me and for knowledge of which he had, presumably, wanted me.

"Oh," he said, "I didn't buy you for myself. I know very little about art and music and am no connoisseur at all. I bought you for my cousin Pomponius Falco. He is as much interested in such matters as any man in Africa. He is richer than I and you'll find him the best possible master. He'll be at Carthage when we get there and I'll resell you to him soon after we land."

Nonius and Clatenna had no children, but doted on her sister's son, a lad of not much over twenty, lean as his aunt, but small boned and not unshapely. He was not, however, handsome, for he had a pasty, grayish complexion, thin lank hair, almost no beard, and a long nose suggesting a proboscis. His name was Rufius Libo, and he was Nonius Libo's heir. In his favor Nonius made a will a few days before we left Rome, leaving him his entire estate except a jointure to Clatenna, endowments to some municipal institutions in his home towns, legacies to various friends and manumission to faithful slaves. Of this will he had several duplicates made and properly witnessed and sealed. One of these he left on deposit in Rome; another he despatched to Carthage by a special messenger by way of Rhegium, Messana, the length of Sicily to Lilybaeum and thence by sea to Carthage; and he gave one each to Clatenna and to Rufius.

When he gave orders for the despatch of the copy of his will by the special messenger I was astonished, as I assumed that we were to travel by the same route. But I found that he meant to sail all the way from the Tiberside water-front of Rome to Carthage. This amazed me. And not unnaturally. For we Romans generally dislike or even abhor the sea and sail it as little as possible, making our journeys as much as we can by land and as little as may be by water, choosing any detour by land which will shorten what crossings of the sea cannot be avoided.

Among the few Romans whom I have known who enjoy sea voyages I count myself. Of all of them Nonius outclassed the rest. He worshiped the water and was happiest when afloat and well out to sea. He told me that he had spent more money on his private yacht than on any of his residences, and, when I saw her, I believed him. A larger, better designed, better equipped, better manned, better supplied, better appointed private yacht I never beheld. His rowers kept perfect time and made top speed all down the Tiber, her crew set sail like man-of-warsmen, her officers were pattern seamen and got the very most speed on their way from every condition of wind and weather. Rufius and Clatenna, while not as good sailors as Nonius and I, were notably good sailors and we had a very pleasant voyage until we were almost in sight of Carthage. Then we encountered a really terrific storm.

Now I am not going into any details of our disaster. I do not know whether all writers of memoirs get shipwrecked or all survivors of shipwrecks write reminiscences, but I am certain that of all the countless memoirs I have read in the course of my life, ninety-nine out of every hundred contained one or more accounts of shipwrecks, narrated with the minutest detail and dwelling on the horrors, agonies, miseries, fears, discomforts and uncertainties of the survivors and narrators with every circumstance calculated to harrow up their readers' feelings. I could write a similar meticulous narrative of my only shipwreck, and it was sufficiently uncomfortable, terrifying, ghastly and hideous to glut a reader as greedy of horrors as could be, but I am going to pass over it as lightly as possible and summarize it as briefly as I may.

Suffice it to set down here that we were not driven on any rock or reef or shoal nor did we collide with any other ship. Laboring heavily in the open sea, straining on the crests and wallowing in the troughs of the stupendous billows, the yacht, even as carefully built a yacht as Libo's, began to leak appallingly, the inrush of the water surpassed the utmost capacity of the pumps and the most frantic efforts of the men at them; the vessel settled lower and lower, labored more and more heavily and was manifestly about to founder.

The officers were capable men, the small boats sturdy and their crews and steersmen skillful and confident. Clatenna was brave and Libo magnificent. He kept his head, dominated his officers, and insisted that Rufius and I should embark in a different boat from that to which he and Clatenna trusted themselves. He personally saw to it that Clatenna and Rufius had, on their persons, each their copy of his will.

Both boats were successfully launched, and, as we drew away from the doomed ship, we saw a third and fourth put off with other valued members of his household. While a fifth and sixth were being swung overboard we saw, from the top of a huge swell, the yacht go under and vanish; saw, when we next rose on the chine of a billow, the water dotted with spars, wreckage and swimmers; saw, five or six times more, the three other boats: and then many times, high on a vast wave, beheld only the waste of lifeless waters, without boat or swimmer.

All night we floated and, not long after sunrise, we were seen and rescued by a trading ship from Carales in Sardinia, bound for Carthage.

At Carthage we were soon in the palace formerly Libo's and now the property of Rufius. He, on succeeding to his uncle's estate, at once rewarded with a huge donation the steersman of the boat in which we had been saved, saying that the other steersmen did their best, but that, if the others had been as dexterous as he, his aunt and uncle would not have perished by so deplorable and so untimely a death.

Within a few days he, now my owner by inheritance, sold me to Pomponius Falco, as Nonius had intended to do himself.

Falco liked me at first sight and I him. He was a man between thirty-five and forty years of age, a natural born bachelor and art connoisseur. He was of medium height, of stout build, with curly black hair and a curly black beard, a swarthy complexion, a bullet head, a bull neck, a huge chest and plump arms and legs. He was by no means unhandsome in appearance and very jovial, good-humored, and good-natured; manifestly fond of all the good things of life and able to discriminate and appreciate the best.

For several days after I came into his possession I was his dearest toy. He spent most of his waking hours conversing with me about music and musicians, poetry and poets, literature and authors, paintings and painters, statuary and sculptors, architecture and architects, gems, ivories, embroideries, textiles, furniture, pottery and even autographs and autograph collecting. He seemed to appraise me an expert on all such lines and to be well pleased with his purchase.

Certainly I was as well clothed, fed, lodged and attended as if I had been his twin-brother.

Before he had owned me many days Falco said to me:

"Phorbas, I've been puzzling about you. You are a slave and you were sold to poor Libo and by Rufius to me as a Greek. Yet you have none of the appearance nor behavior of a Greek nor yet of a slave. You look and act and talk like a freeman born and a full-blooded Roman, and a noble at that. Please explain."

Now, of course, in imagining all the forms in which I might be assaulted by the perils which beset me, I had foreseen just such a query as this utterance of Falco's involved and I had pondered and rehearsed my answer. I realized that I must be ready with a reply wholly plausible because entirely consonant with the facts of our social life, as they existed, so that no one could take any exception to it. I thought I had framed such a reply.

"You know how it is," I answered easily. "A Roman master buys a young and comely Greek handmaid. In due course she has a daughter, legally also a slave and nominally a Greek, yet half Roman. When she is grown, if she happens to be comely and the property of a master like most masters, she has a daughter, a slave and spoken of as a Greek, yet only a quarter Greek. If she has a similar daughter, that daughter, a slave and called a Greek, is only one-eighth Greek. I conceive, from all I know, that my great grandmother, grandmother and mother were such slave women. I, a slave and ostensibly a Greek, am fifteen-sixteenths Roman noble, by ancestry, according to my reckoning. No wonder my descent shows in my bearing, manner and conversation."

This answer was, actually, not so far from the facts, my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother had, certainly, been Roman noblewomen, daughters indeed, each of one of the oldest and longest-lineaged houses of our nobility; and, like my father, grandfather and great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather had been a Roman nobleman. But his father, my great-great-great-grandfather, had been a freed-man, manumitted in the days of Nero, acquiring great wealth, attaining equestrian rank during the last years of Nero's reign, and vastly enriched during the confusion of the civil wars, marrying a young and wealthy widow after Vespasian was firmly established at Rome by the crushing of the insurrection of Claudius Civilis.

Probably the general consonance of my answer with the facts made my utterance of it more convincing. Certainly it appealed to Falco.

"Just about what I conjectured," he said, smiling. "And will you tell me in what part of Italy and on what estate you were born and how you came by your air of aristocratic culture and by your marvellous dilettantism?"

"I know what I know and am what I am," I replied, "because I was, from childhood, treated just as if a son instead of a slave; pampered, indulged and made much of. That lasted till I was more than full-grown.

"The misfortunes of the family to which I belonged came so suddenly that I was not manumitted, as I should have been had my master had so much as a day's warning of his downfall. I was sold to a fool and a brute, as you have probably inferred from my back. The marks of his barbarity which I bear, and my lasting grief for the calamity of the household in which I was born, make me unwilling to tell you anything of my past previous to my purchase from Olynthides by Nonius Libo."

"Well," he said, "your feeling is natural and I shall not urge my curiosity on you. I mean to indulge you and even pamper you; mean to endeavor to indulge you and pamper you so you will feel more indulged and pampered than ever in your life, I'll make a new will, at once, leaving you your freedom and a handsome property. I expect to live out a long life, all my kin have been healthy and long-lived. But one can never be certain of living and I mean to run no risks of your having any more troubles. You deserve ease and comfort. And you shall have them if I can arrange it. I love you like a born brother and mean to treat you as well as if you were my twin."

The year in which Commodus killed the two lions, each with one blow of his trifling-looking little palm-wood club, in which year I was sold out of the Choragium, and purchased by Nonius, in which I crossed the sea, was wrecked and saved and resold to Falco, was the nine hundred and forty- first year of the City [Footnote: 188 A.D.] and the ninth of the reign of Commodus, the year in which the consuls were Allius Fuscianus and Duillius Silanus, each for the second time. In Africa, with Falco, I spent that and the following year very comfortably and happily, for I was as well clothed, fed, lodged and tended as Falco himself. I liked him, even loved him, and I felt perfectly safe.

The climate of Africa agreed with me, and I liked the fare, especially the many kinds of fruit which we seldom see in Rome and then not in their best condition, and some of which we never see in Italy at all. I admired the scenery, and I delighted in the cities, not only Carthage and Utica, but both Hippo Regius and Hippo Diarrhytus, and also Hadrumetum, Tacape, Cirta and Theveste, and even such mere towns as Lambaesis and Thysdrus, which last has an amphitheater second only to the Colosseum itself. They all had fine amphitheaters, magnificent circuses, gorgeous theaters and sumptuous public hot baths. Not one but had a fine library, a creditable public picture-gallery, and many noble groups of statuary, with countless fine statues adorning the public buildings, streets and parks. The society of all these places was delightfully cultured, easy and unaffected. I revelled in it and could not have been happier except that I never heard from Vedia or Tanno, let alone had a letter from either. And I wrote to both and sent off letter after letter to one or the other. For it seemed to me that a letter in this form could not excite any suspicion.

"Phorbas gives greeting to Opsitius, and informs him that after he had been sold by Olynthides to Nonius Libo, he survived the sinking of his owner's yacht and was sold by Libo's heir to Pomponius Falco, in whose retinue he now is. Farewell."

I sent off, at least once a season, a letter like this to both Tanno and Vedia. No word from either ever reached me. I could but conjecture that all my letters had miscarried.

Meanwhile, besides being reminded of it each time I wrote to Tanno or Vedia, I did not forget that I was a proscribed fugitive, my life forfeit if I were detected. I conceived that my best disguise was to dress, act and talk as much as possible in the character of dilettante art expert and music-lover, which I had assumed. Falco treated me, as he had prophesied, almost as a brother. I had a luxurious apartment in each of his town residences and country villas, and a retinue of servants: valet, bath- attendant, room-keeper, masseur, reader, messenger, runner and a litter with three shifts of powerful bearers. Everything Falco could think of in the way of clothing, furniture and art objects was showered on me and my slightest hint of a wish was quickly gratified. Also Falco supplied me a lavish allowance of cash. Therefore I could gratify any whim. Besides, my amulet-bag was intact and had in it all the gems which Agathemer had originally placed there, except only the emerald Bulla had sold for me.

I thought up everything I could do to make myself look completely a Greek virtuoso and as un-Roman-looking as possible. I patronized every complexion-specialist, friseur, perukier, manicurist and fashionable barber in that part of the world. I bought every hair tonic for sale in the colony. Between lotions and expert manipulation I succeeded in growing a thick curly beard, covering my chest as far as the lower end of my breast-bone and a thick head of hair so long that, even when elaborately frizzed and curled, my oiled and scented locks fell as far down my back as my beard spread on my bosom. Nothing could have made me look more Corinthian and less Roman.

I wore the gaudiest clothing I could find; tunics and cloaks of pure silk and of the brightest or most effeminate hues; crimson, emerald-green, peacock-green, grass-green, apple-green, sea-green, sapphire-blue, sky- blue, turquoise-blue, saffron, orange, amethystine, violet and any and every unusual tint; boots of glazed kidskin or of dull finish soft skin, of hues like my silk garments, always with the edges of the soles heavily gilded. And, for my shoes as well as for my garments, I chose particolored materials with the most startling or languorous combinations of unusual dyes. All my boots and shoes were embroidered in silver thread or gold thread, all my outer garments embroidered in crimson, deep green, deep blue, gold or silver, in big, striking, conspicuous patterns. I had elephants, lions, antelopes, horses, cattle, sheep, stags, goats, storks, cranes, even fish embroidered on my outer garments amid trees, vines, and flowers; roses, lilies, violets, poppies and others uncountable. I spent on such gewgaws a considerable part of my allowance, yet never exhausted Falco's lavish provision for me.

I also went in for jewelry, loading my fingers with flashy rings, wearing bracelets on both wrists, two or three on each, always two necklaces and even earrings, for which I had my ears pierced, like a Lydian.

When I conned myself in my dressing-room mirror, arrayed in such a superfluity of decorations and fripperies, I felt sure that no one would take me for a Roman.

In these apparently natural vanities and vagaries Falco humored me, enquiring of his friends concerning friseurs of acclaimed reputation, buying me any gaudy fabrics he saw, also presenting me with caskets of necklaces, amulets, bracelets, finger-rings and earrings. He rallied me on my oriental tastes, but aided me to gratify them.

He even came to feel his interest in jewelry and gems enhanced by my fad for them. He took to purchasing antiques in jewelry and rare and unusual gems and his hoard grew into a notable collection.

By the end of my second winter with Falco I had come to know intimately all his town and country palaces and all his dilettanti friends and had enjoyed to the full the many delights of the colony, not only its climate and fruits, its scenery and cities, its statuary and pictures, its libraries and public-baths, but its excellent performances of tragedies and comedies, and its spectacles creditable, not only as to chariot-racing but also as to beast-fights and exhibitions of gladiators. I found life in Africa extremely agreeable and looked forward to any length of it with contentment.

I may remark that during this time Cleander came to the end of his period of unlimited wealth, power and misrule. I was thus out of Rome at the time of his downfall and death and while the Praetorium had a score of Prefects in rapid succession.

In the spring of the nine hundred and forty-third year of the city, [Footnote: A.D. 190.] and the eleventh of the reign of Commodus, the year in which he was nominally consul for the sixth time, along with Petronius Septimianus, Falco startled me, while we were dining alone together, as Agathemer and I had used to dine together, by saying:

"Phorbas, you talk of Rome differently from any other man I ever heard talk of it. I have meditated over the quality of what you say of Rome, but I cannot analyze it or describe it accurately. Yet I may say that others talk of Rome as holy ground, but you alone make me feel that the soil inside the Pomoerium is holy ground: others talk of the grandeur of Rome; you make me realize its grandeur: others prate of their love for Rome: you, saying little, make me tingle with a subtly communicated sense of how you love Rome: others babble of how life away from Rome is not life, but merely existence; of how any dwelling out of Rome is exile, of how they long for Rome; you, by some sorcery, make me not only feel how you long for Rome, but have awakened in me a longing for Rome. I have never been out of this colony of Africa, not even into Mauretania. A man as rich as I and of equestrian rank can afford to travel, to visit all the interesting parts of the Empire, to live where he likes, anywhere in Italy or even in Rome.

"I have never wanted to leave this colony: I love every bit of it and especially my residences and estates. I have been satisfied here. When my friends argued with me and tried to persuade me to travel and especially to visit Rome, I never was convinced by their arguments. I have a dread of sea-voyaging, a dread accentuated by the death of poor Libo. who was an enthusiastic voyager and had a yacht as staunch and a crew as capable as skill could produce, money buy and judgment collect. Yet he perished. I did not need the warning of his fate to keep me ashore. Then again, I prefer to be a big frog in a small pond to being a small frog in a big pond, I am one of the most important men in this colony and, here in Africa, I am always somebody. In Rome I should be nobody.

"Yet, without my realizing it and later against my will, your conversation, in some subtle way, has so infected me with the desire to see Rome that I am going to brave the terrors of the seas, am going to sink myself into insignificance among the scores of richer and more influential men who cluster about Caesar. I am even going to put at the mercy of the sea my precious collection of gems, which I now value more than you and myself together and twice over.

"I have made all my arrangements. I have put my affairs in order, made sure that my estates will be properly managed in my absence, bought the best yacht to be had in the harbor of Carthage, and that is saying a great deal for its excellence, and I have ordered coffers in which to pack my beloved gems.

"Prepare to accompany me; within ten days we set off for Rome."

I knew Falco. Easy-going as he was, when he had taken a notion to buy and indulge a connoisseur-slave, collect gems or visit Rome, opposition, arguments, artfulness or stratagems were alike useless. I resigned myself to my fate.

I meditated over this fifth fulfillment of the prophecy of the Aemilian Sibyl.

Since I had been with Falco and practically a free and rich man, I had made handsome sacrifices at Mercury's Temples in all the cities we visited which had temples to Mercury. The morning after Falco announced his intentions to go to Rome I went out alone and unattended; myself, in the market place of Carthage, bought two white hens; myself carried them to the Temple of Mercury and myself had them offered to the god.



CHAPTER XXXIII

IMPOSTURE

We had no bad weather on our voyage to Rome nor any adventure. The day before we sailed I had conned my image in the mirror in my dressing-room and had comforted myself with the decision that no human creature could conceivably suspect of being a Roman this full-bearded, longhaired, long- nailed, frizzed, curled, oiled, perfumed, gaudy, tawdry, bedizened, bejeweled, powdered, rouged, painted popinjay.

I laid in an extra supply of nail-polish, nail-tint, rouge, face-paint, blackening for painting eyebrows and eyelashes, and of perfumery, cosmetics, unguents and such like. If I were sufficiently whitened, reddened, rouged, and painted I hoped I should be well enough disguised to face Gratillus or even Flavius Clemens without a qualm. Actually my bizarre and fantastic appearance was an almost complete protection to me.

And I needed protection. For Falco was related to many prominent families and men in Rome; for instance, he was a cousin of Senator Sosius Falco, who was consul two years later. He was introduced widely and at once and invited everywhere. I was constantly in attendance on him.

My experiences during my long stay at Rome with Falco were, in truth, amazing. He bought a fine palace on the Esquiline, near the Baths of Titus, furnished it lavishly, entertained magnificently and revelled in the life of Rome. At first I was busy showing him the chief sights of the City, then the minor sights, then coaching him in the niceties of social usages, then convoying him on the round of all notable sculptures, picture galleries, private collections of pictures or statuary, famous museums, repositories of all kinds of art objects and, especially, the gem collections, both private and public, particularly the large exhibit in the temple of Venus Genetrix, placed there by the Divine Julius, and the smaller exhibit in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, donated by Octavia's son, Marcellus.

Later he divided his time between giving dinners and going out to dinners and haunting the houses of gem collectors and the shops of jewelers.

He began visiting jewelers' shops, to be sure, within a few days of our arrival in Rome. We had not been there ten days, in fact, when he made me conduct him to the Porticus Margaritaria, on the Via Sacra, near the great Forum, which was and is the focus of pearl dealers and gem dealers in general in Rome.

There we entered several shops and, at last, I could not keep him out of that of Orontides, who had known me perfectly. His was unique among shops in Rome and probably was the largest and most splendid jewelry shop in all the world: more like a small temple of Hercules or a temple-treasury than a shop. It was not in the Pearl-Dealers' Arcade, where only small, square, usual shops were possible, but adjacent to it and entered from the Via Sacra. It was circular, with a door of cast bronze, beautifully ornamented with reliefs of pearl-divers, tritons, nereids and other marine subjects. Inside its dome-shaped roof was lined with an intricate mosaic of bits of glass as brilliant as rubies, emeralds and sapphires, or as gold and silver. The roof rested on a circular entablature with a very ornate cornice, under which was a frieze ornamented with reliefs, representing winged cupids working as gem-cutters and polishers, as chasers of salvers and goblets, and as goldsmiths and silversmiths. The architrave was as ornate as the cornice. The entablature was supported by eight Ionic columns of the slenderest and most delicate type, of dark yellow Numidian marble, while the lining of the wall-spaces was of the lighter yellow Mauretanian marble. Of the eight wall-spaces one was occupied by the doorway, over which was a bronze group representing a combat of two centaurs. On either side of the door was a wall-space ennobled by a niche with a life-size, bronze statue, one of Orontides' father, the other of his grandfather, both of whom had been distinguished gem-dealers at Antioch. Two more wall-spaces were occupied by ample windows, not of open lattices, but glazed with almost crystalline glass set in bronze, a form of window seldom seen except in great temples, the Imperial Palace, and the residences of the most opulent senators and noblemen.

The three wall-spaces behind the counter were filled from column to column with tiers of superposed recesses, in size like the urn niches of a burial columbarium, but each closed with a door of cornel-wood carved and polished, behind which doors Orontides kept his precious merchandise.

The counter divided the shop across from window to window. It had in the middle a narrow wicket through which Orontides and his assistants could crawl in and out. Otherwise the outer face of the counter was of two blocks of Numidian marble, carved in patterns of twining vines; its top was of one long slab of the exquisitely delicate white marble from Luna. On it lay always squares of velvet, in color dark blue, black, dark green, and crimson, on which were admirably displayed his goldsmith work and jewelries.

Below the panels about each statued niche was a curved seat of Numidian marble amply large for four persons at once, so that eight prospective customers could sit and wait while as many stood at the counter; and, according to my recollection of the shop in the days of my prosperity, a shop crowded with customers was the rule rather than the exception with Orontides.

It was crowded when we entered. I, endeavoring to conserve a natural demeanor, felt my sight blur. I saw, as we entered, only a row of backs of customers standing at the counter: three in noblemen's togas, one in the toga of a senator, their fulldress boots conspicuously red beneath their robes; four in the silken garments of wealthy ladies, all in pale soft hues of exquisite Coan dyes.

Of these eight backs two, one of the lady midway of the counter, the other of her escort, appeared terrifyingly familiar.

In fact, when we entered I had three distinct shocks in quick succession. Flashy, painted and rouged as I was I dreaded Orontides' eyes. There he was behind his counter, visible through a rift in the press of handsomely dressed customers of both sexes.

Instinctively I glanced at the only other interval in the line of absorbed opulent backs.

Through it I recognized Agathemer smiling at me!

I saw that he, at least, recognized me at once and my dread of Orontides intensified tenfold. I knew Agathemer would be discreet, loyal and trusty. I dreaded to lose countenance if I kept my eyes on his face and I looked elsewhere.

I recognized the back of Flavius Clemens!

If he turned round I felt I was lost. Yet I could not flee. Falco was certain to linger in the shop. I must keep my self-control and prepare to brazen out anything.

The next instant I recognized the back of the lady next Flavius Clemens.

Vedia!

As I recognized her she turned, saw me, knew me through my disguise, flushed, and turned back.

I should not have been surprised if she had fainted and crumpled up on the white and brown mosaic floor in front of the counter. She kept her feet and her outward self-possession.

Clemens spoke to her in an undertone.

"No," she answered him, in a choked voice, "I have changed my mind. I won't take these."

She was handling an unsurpassable necklace of big pearls.

He whispered to her.

"No," she said, curtly. "I won't look at any others. I think I'll go home."

He was so amazed that he never saw me or, I think, anything or anybody else in that shop just then. He escorted her out.

When I regained my self-possession enough to feel that I appeared at ease and could trust myself to glance at the other customers as I should have done had I been in fact what I was trying to appear, I was relieved to find that not one of them was more than distantly known to me.

The idlers on the benches showed no inclination to rise and approach the counter. Falco and I occupied the interval vacated by Clemens and Vedia. Agathemer, of all men on earth, asked what he could do for us. Falco stood there a long time, saw a goodly fraction of the finest jewels in Orontides' possession and, manifestly, made as favorable impression of connoisseurship on Agathemer as Agathemer made on him. They eyed each other as fellow-adepts. Falco asked that he reserve an antique Babylonian seal cut in sardonyx and promised to send a messenger with its price before dark. Agathemer, who was passing under the name of Eucleides, blandly replied that Orontides would prefer to send the seal to Falco's residence. Falco agreed, of course, and to my unutterable relief we finally departed.

Agathemer—Eucleides—brought the seal; and timed his arrival neatly as Falco returned from the Baths of Titus just before dinner time. He was giving a big formal dinner and my dinner was to be served in my apartment, which had a tiny triclinium; being as lavishly appointed, and one in which I was as luxuriously lodged and served, as those I had had in Carthage and Utica.

I asked Agathemer if he could stay and dine with me and he accepted. We had a wonderful dinner. The food, of course, was unsurpassable and our appetites keyed up by our mutual emotions. When the dessert and wine were brought in I dismissed the waiters, made sure that no man or boy of my retinue was in my apartment and bolted its door.

Then we fell into each other's arms.

After we had expressed our mutual affection I told him my story from the morning after the massacre and he told me his, which was commonplace.

He had easily escaped from the slave-convoy between Narnia and Interamnia, had made his way to Ameria and found shelter there with slaves as an ordinary runaway slave. After a discreet interval he had travelled to Rome. There he had found old acquaintances to protect and shield him. I was presumed to be dead and any fellow-slave would help him in his situation, he being presumed to be legally a slave of the fiscus. He had no difficulty in disposing of a gem out of his amulet-bag and then rented lodgings, passed as a freedman, by the name of Eucleides, and gradually made himself known to various gem-experts who gave him as much protection as had his fellow-slaves, his former acquaintances. Orontides perfectly knew who he was, yet engaged him as an assistant by the name of Eucleides and as being a freedman. Ever since then he had lived safe in his lodgings, and spent his days at Orontides' shop or about Rome at gem- dealers. He declared that he was, if possible, more of a gem-expert than before our adventures began, which was saying a great deal.

He laughed heartily and often at my disguise, acclaimed it a work of art in every detail and in its total effect and vowed that he believed that I could spend years in Rome in Falco's retinue and encounter all my old acquaintances and be in little danger from any and in no danger except from such professional physiognomists as Galen and Gratillus.

I told him of what Galen had said to Tanno. Agathemer said he had had only two interviews with Tanno, at which they had deplored my death, I having been believed to have perished with Nonius Libo. They had also agreed to avoid each other, for fear of attracting the notice of some secret-service agent or volunteer spy. Tanno had not mentioned Galen.

We agreed that we, also, must avoid each other and not meet oftener than say four times a year, for fear of leading to my detection.

He told me of Marcia's unlimited power over Commodus, the whole Palace and the entire social and governmental world of Rome. He also said that he was convinced that Ducconius Furfur was domiciled in the Palace and that Commodus used him as dummy ceremonial Emperor, when he himself was masquerading as Palus, the Gladiator, for he was now developing for public exhibitions of his swordsmanship a mania as insensate as those he had had for charioteering and beast-fighting.

Next day, naturally, I had a visit from Tanno, who even sacrificed his afternoon bath and came to see me while Falco was at the Baths of Titus.

He embraced me heartily, when we were alone, and talked with his habitual mask of jocularity.

"Three times dead, Caius," he said, "and still alive and fit. Dying seems to agree with you, whether it is military execution, rural assassination, or drowning at sea. I am still incredulous that you are really alive; we had the most circumstantial accounts of the loss of poor Libo's yacht with all on board."

"That is odd," I said, "Rufius Libo survived and succeeded to his uncle's property."

"I knew he inherited all Nonius left," Tanno stated, "but I had no idea that Nonius had Rufius with him here in Rome and that he was on the yacht; I thought he was in Carthage all the while. Certainly every account we had specified that no one was rescued from that yacht."

I told him that Rufius had promised me to write him of my survival and that I had despatched at least a score of letters to him and as many to Vedia. He was as puzzled as I that not one had reached either of them.

I gave him an account of my life since he had seen me and he approved of my disguise as much as had Agathemer and laughed at it even more heartily.

He said:

"Poor Flavius Clemens is in a daze. He cannot conjecture what has gone wrong with his wooing again a second time. He behaved very tactfully after his first rebuff ensuing on Galen's tip to me and mine to Vedia. He was so cautious about not thrusting himself on Vedia that their acquaintance, quite naturally, warmed again gradually into mutual interest and romantic affection and was ripening into love when the sight of you yesterday annihilated his excellent chances of marrying her. He was just about to buy for her a two-million-sesterce pearl necklace. If she had accepted the gift it would have been tantamount to a public pledge to marry him. Poor fellow!"

When he left he gave me a letter from Vedia, a letter as loving as a lover could wish for. She declared that she would not marry Flavius Clemens nor anybody except me and would wait for me as long as might be necessary or stay unmarried until the end of her days, if, by any misfortune, the end came to her before she and I were free to marry.

She said that we must avoid each other as much as possible and that I must not spoil my chances of safety either by relying too recklessly on my disguise or through risking arousing suspicion in Falco by any attempt at confining myself to my apartment, which would have been altogether incongruous with the character I had assumed.

The rest of that year and all the winter I passed living the normal life of an indulged and pampered favorite of an opulent bachelor dilettante noble. It was a life almost as enjoyable as the life of a wealthy nobleman to which I had been born and brought up.

I had but one anxiety and that was not small and it steadily increased. It was caused by a progressive alteration and deterioration in the character of my master. In all other respects he remained the man he had been when he first bought me, but as a gem-fancier his hobby became a passion which deepened into a mania and colored, or discolored, all he did. He had, as he always had had, a very large surplus of income over and above what was needful to maintain his huge estates in Africa, his many luxurious villas and town-palaces there, his yacht and his palaces in Italy at Baiae and at Rome. The normal accumulation of this surplus had taxed his sagacity as an investor, for it was always harder for him to find advantageous investments for his redundant cash than to find cash for tempting investments. Certainly his excess income more than sufficed for any reasonable indulgence in gem-collecting.

Yet his outlay for rare gems ran up to and outran and far outran his resources. The strange result was that he, who had huge revenues from estates and safe investments, desired a still greater income. He began to embark in risky ventures which promised large and quick returns. He went into partnership with two different nobles, who made a practice of bidding on the taxes of frontier provinces exposed to enemy raids. Bidders were shy of investing their cash in the problematical returns of such regions and those who had the hardihood to enter into contracts with the government made huge profits if lucky. Falco was lucky each time. He plunged again and again.

He also embarked similarly in bidding for unpromising contracts and in buying up estates thrown unexpectedly on the market. All his ventures turned out successfully, he gained great resources for indulging his fad for gems and rare curios, his collection grew and became one of the most famous private collections in Rome.

Also his mania for speculation grew as fast as his mania for collecting gems.

This led to my exposure to the oddest and most alarming peril which I had run since Agathemer and I crawled through the drain-pipe at Villa Andivia; greater I think, than the risk I ran when I nearly encountered Gratillus at Placentia. This happened about eleven months after I came to Rome with Falco, in the spring of the year when Pedo Apronianus and Valerius Bradua were consuls.

This occurrence and the circumstances which led up to it I cannot forbear narrating, but I shall not go into details, for it involves at least allusion to behavior not at all creditable to my owner and I am unwilling to disparage or seem to disparage one who was to me a dear friend and a generous benefactor. The truth is that his passion for gem-collecting had not only undermined his character but had, in a way, sapped the foundations of his native uprightness. If he had remained the man he was when he bought me he would not have been capable of entertaining, let alone of acting on, the considerations which actuated him.

He thought he saw a chance to make vast profits quickly with no risks. But to achieve this he needed the presence and the countenance of another wealthy nobleman of the African province, who, like him when he purchased me, had never been in Rome or, indeed, out of the colony. The name of this man, whom I had met while in Thysdrus, was Salsonius Salinator. His wealth, inherited by his father and grandfather from a long line of wealthy ancestors, came from many vast salt works along the coast, which, by the custom of the province, remained private property and merely paid the government a lease-tax or rent. The family had been, many generations before, named from these works and was very proud of its names.

Now Falco had so far progressed with his negotiations that the other parties to the proposed bargain were unwilling to close the deal and sign a contract with Falco and his associates unless Salsonius Salinator, in person, appeared to make some necessary statements, and were willing and eager to sign and seal, the projected agreement if he did appear in person and did make those required statements. I am averse to smirching Falco's memory by going more minutely into detail.

Now Salinator had written Falco that he was coming to Rome and later, when he received a letter from Falco outlining the pending negotiations and their object, he had written promising to be in Rome by a specified date. He was most enthusiastic as to Falco's project and thought as well of it as did Falco. Falco told his associates of Salinator's letter and promise and they adjusted their outstanding investments so as to be able to close the contract as soon as Salinator appeared.

He did not appear on the date specified. Naturally Falco was perturbed, his associates vexed and the men with whom they were dealing increasingly restive. They threatened to break off the negotiations and close a contract with other bidders. Falco begged for an extension of the time and they grudgingly granted it. Still no signs of or word from Salinator. The negotiations appeared likely to fall through.

In his distress Falco conceived and set about putting into practice a scheme such as he would never have thought of or entertained if he had been the man he was when he bought me. When he was himself he had been the reverse of dishonorable. He came to me and said:

"We are at the end of our tether, Pullanius and his gang will break off negotiations tomorrow if I can't get hold of Salinator. I have no hope of his arrival, he may have not yet sailed from Carthage; he may have changed his mind about coming at all. I am not willing to lose so brilliant a chance. I have thought of just what to do.

"You would look like a Roman if you had your beard trimmed and your hair cut and all that powder and paint and rouge washed off your face: I took you for a full-blooded Roman when I first set eyes on you. What is more you would look so utterly unlike what you look like in your fantastic fripperies that no one would even suspect you of being the same man. Anyhow, Pullanius and his crowd have never set eyes on you, not one of them.

"All you have to do is to have your beard cut to about the fashionable length and your hair trimmed to conform similarly with current fashions for Roman noblemen and get into full-dress shoes, a nobleman's tunic and toga, and you'll pass anywhere for a genuine, free-born, full-blooded Roman.

"I'll take you to Pullanius tomorrow and introduce you as Salsonius Salinator. I'll coach you carefully as to how to behave and what to say. You are clever enough to assume the natural Roman demeanor to a nicety: also to rise to any unexpected situations and act and talk precisely as would Salinator himself.

"It will be sharp practice, in a sense. But I know Salinator would say all I want him to say, all Pullanius requires him to say, and more, if he were actually here. He is as keen on closing this contract as I am. So I am not asking you to be a party to an actual fraud. You will only be bringing about what would come about without you if something unforeseen had not prevented Salinator from getting here in time."

Now I had often differed with Falco, argued with him, opposed him, refused requests of his, and he had acquiesced and had acted as if I were not his property, but a free man and his complete social equal. But this was a situation wholly different from any I had encountered before. When it came to gem-collecting or to anything which gave him or would give him or was expected to yield him surplus cash for buying more gems for his collection, Falco was a monomaniac. I dared not refuse, or oppose him or argue or show any hesitation. A master can change in a twinkling from an indulgent friend to an infuriated despot. In spite of the laws passed by Hadrian and his successors limiting the authority of masters over their slaves and giving slaves certain rights before magistrates, in practice an angry master can go to any length to coerce a recalcitrant slave. I saw not only privations, discomforts, hunger, confinement and chains threatening me, but scourging and torture.

I acquiesced.

Now I am not going into any details as to what I did and said to induce Pullanius and his associates to execute the desired contract. I acted the part of Salinator to perfection and my imposture succeeded completely.

But the negotiations dragged, for all that, and I had to impersonate Salsonius Salinator not only before Pullanius and his partners but generally all over Rome: had to submit to being shown the sights in my character of a provincial magnate in Rome for the first time; had to allow myself to be dragged to morning receptions of senators and wealthy noblemen and introduced to them; had to accept invitations to dinners given by noblemen and senators; even had to attend a public morning reception in the Audience Hall of the Palace. That I escaped undetected was more than miraculous; I could not believe it myself. But I did escape.

I escaped unsuspected the ordeal of being haled to a morning reception of Vedius Vedianus and presented to him as Salsonius Salinator of Carthage, Nepte and Putea. I should have been lost had he had at his elbow to jog his memory if he forgot a visitor's name the slave he had had in that capacity seven years before, since that alert nomenclator would have recognized me at once. But he had died of the plague and his successor had never set eyes on me. Vedius himself would certainly have known me for my true self but for his inveterate selfishness, and self-absorption and his incapacity for being diverted from whatever thought or idea happened to be uppermost in his narrow mind. He was, for some reason, eager to be done with his reception and had no eyes for any visitors except those from whom he expected immediate and positive advantage to himself. I escaped, but I went out sweating and limp with excitement.

I was even more faint and weak after having to attend a Palace levee. Fortunately Commodus had wearied of his father's methods of holding receptions and had reverted to the regulations in vogue under Trajan and Hadrian, according to which only such senators as were summoned approached the throne and were personally greeted by the Prince; the rest of the senators and all the lesser noblemen merely passed before the Emperor as he stood in front of the throne, passing four abreast along the main pavement at the foot of the steps of the dais and saluting him as they passed. Amid this crush of mediocrities I passed unnoticed, unremarked, unscathed.

But I marvelled at my luck, for I knew many eyes of secret-service experts scanned that slow-moving column of togaed noblemen and such adepts have a marvellous memory for the shape of an ear, a nose, a chin, or any such feature. After my hair and beard had been trimmed to suit Falco's notions and my face was innocent of powder, rouge and paint and I was habited in a tunic and toga with stripes of the width belonging to Salinator's rank and dress-boots of the cut and color proper for him I conned my reflection in the mirror in my dressing-room and was certain that anyone who had known me as myself must recognize me at first glance.

My two worst ordeals came when I went out with Falco to my second and fourth formal dinner in Rome in my character of provincial magnate. I went with him, altogether, to eight different dinners at the houses of capitalists associated with or supposed to have influence with Pullanius. Not once, in any of these eight perilous expeditions, did it occur to Falco to inform me beforehand where I was to dine. And I thought it best not to ask him, since I reflected that his complete ignorance of my past was an important factor in my chances of continued concealment and safety; and since I felt that some word, tone or look of mine might put him on the road to suspecting the truth about me. Therefore I set out to each of these eight dinners totally ignorant of our destination.

The first time I knew I was to dine with Appellasius Clavviger, a Syrian capitalist who had been in Rome not much longer than Falco himself. Judge of my feelings when, in the mellow light which bathes Rome just after the sun has set from a clear sky and before day has begun to fade, I perceived that my litter-bearers, following Falco's, were turning into the street where I had lived before my ruin! Imagine my sensations when we halted before the palatial dwelling which had been my uncle's abode and mine! I was even more perturbed and overwhelmed by my emotions when on entering behind Falco I found nothing changed, scarcely anything altered from what had been there on the fatal morning on which, without any premonition of disaster, I had set off to the Palace levee and had, on my way, been saved by Vedia's intervention and letter. The appointments of the vestibule, of the porter's lodge, were as I had known them in my uncle's lifetime. So were the furnishings of the atrium and tablinum. Scarcely a statue had been added or so much as moved, most of the pictures being where my uncle had had them hung. Appellasius, a fat, jovial, jolly man, did not see my confusion. We were the last guests to arrive and he was hungry. We passed at once into the triclinium. There also the wall-decorations were precisely as I had last seen them; but the square table and three square sofas had vanished and, in their place, was a new C-shaped sofa and a circular table covered with a magnificent embroidered cloth. In the course of the dinner, the company, as was natural with vulgarians newly enriched, fell to talking of their residences, of their size, convenience, and cost. I took the opportunity to compliment Appellasius on his abode and, as he warmed to the subject, I inquired whether he had inherited it or bought it.

"Neither," said he. "I have merely leased it, and leased it furnished. It belongs to the fiscus; it was confiscated some years ago when its owner was proscribed for joining in one of the conspiracies against, the Emperor. It is a pearl. I am told that the father of its last owner was an art connoisseur. Anyhow I could not improve on its decorations or furnishings. I have made few changes, chiefly installing this up-to-date dining-outfit. The fittings of this room were all of one hundred years old, very fine in material and ornamentation, but unbearably inconvenient."

I had learned all I hoped for or dared attempt, and for the rest of the entertainment I kept to subjects as far as possible from anything likely to compromise me.

My second and far my severest ordeal was when a few evenings later I was dazed to realize that my litter, behind Falco's, was halting before the well-known residence of that booby, Faltonius Bambilio. But I was not afraid of him. I rated him such a dolt, such an ass, that even if he exclaimed that I was the image of Andivius Hedulio I had no doubt I could convince him that I was what I pretended to be and could even expunge from his mind any recollections of his having noticed such a striking resemblance. In fact he did not make any remark on my appearance or seem to have any inkling that he had ever seen me before, but accepted me as an interesting stranger.

I dreaded what guests he might have and the actuality surpassed my capacities to forecast possibilities.

I found the middle sofa at his table, for he adhered to the old-fashioned furnishings for a triclinium, occupied by his wife, Nemestronia and Vedia! Vedia, after one tense moment of incredulous numb staring, regained her composure.

Evidently she had not confided in anyone the fact of my survival and existence. For, if she had, she would have taken dear old Nemestronia into her confidence, since she was as able to keep a secret as any woman who ever lived and had loved me as if I had been her own and only grandson. For Nemestronia manifestly had believed me dead. At sight of me she was as thunderstruck as if she had seen an indubitable specter. She was smitten dumb and rigid and her discomposure was remarked by all present. But she recovered herself in time, passed off her agitation as having been due to one of her sudden attacks of pain in the chest. After that she did as much as Vedia to dispel any tendency to suspicions which she might have aroused. She was plainly, to my eyes, overjoyed at the sight of me in the flesh.

I have branded on my memory for life the picture I saw as I entered the triclinium. Its wall decorations expressed old Bambilio's enthusiasm for Alexandrian art and literature. The ceiling was adorned with a copy of Apellides' Dance of the Loves; and the walls were decorated with copies of equally celebrated paintings by masters of similar fame. The wall niches were filled with statues of the Alexandrian poets, the two opposite the entrance door with those of Euphorion and Philetas, the brilliant hues of the paint on them depicting garments as gaudy as I myself had been wearing a few days before. From the pink faces of the bedizened poets their jeweled eyes sparkled as if they were chuckling at the situation. Under the mellow light shed by the numerous hanging lamps, against the intricate particolored patterns of the wall between the statue-niches, I saw the vacuous baby face of Asellia, Bambilio's pretty doll of a wife, between Vedia's countenance cleverly assuming a normal social expression after her brief glare at me, and Nemestronia's mask of horror, accentuated by the agony of the gripping spasm which throttled her, for the pain in her chest was induced by anything which startled her, and was not assumed.

Once we were composed on the sofas the dinner passed off almost comfortably. For Nemestronia played her part in my behalf fully as well as did Vedia, who conversed with me easily, her demeanor precisely as if I had been Salsonius Salinator, a stranger whom she had just met, our talk mostly about Carthage, salt-works, the lagoons of the edge of the desert, date palms, local fruits, gazelles and such like topics, Nemestronia seconding her with questions about temple libraries, the cult of Isis in Hippo, and such matters. I became almost gay, I was enjoying myself.

The enjoyment, toward the close of the banquet, was marred by Bambilio, who, inevitably, had told Falco of his capture by brigands on the Flaminian Highway and, after his tale was told at great length, insisted on Vedia telling hers.

Worst of all, when she came to her night in her travelling carriage, alone (as of course all supposed) and surrounded by escaped beasts, hyenas, leopards, panthers, tigers and lions, Bambilio must needs remark:

"I'll wager you wished that the ghost of your old lover, Hedulio, had come to your assistance. He could wrestle with leopards; perhaps even his ghost might be able to control wild beasts."

"Perhaps," Vedia rejoined, unruffled, "maybe he was there to help me and maybe that was why I never felt really afraid that any beast would burst into my coach and seize me, though several snuffed at its panels and I could see them plain in the clear moonlight. Perhaps, in spirit, he was close to me to keep off the ravenous beasts and to strengthen my heart."

After she also had ended her story Bambilio eyed me:

"Did you ever hear a story excel hers and mine, Salsonius?" he queried.

"Never," I admitted, my gaze full on his.

The booby showed not a gleam of suspicion!

Inwardly I could not but remark that whereas I despised and loathed Bambilio for his pomposity and self-esteem, he made and kept friends. Plainly both Nemestronia and Vedia liked him, esteemed him and respected him.

After we left, I felt positively exhilarated at having had an evening in Vedia's company and having talked with her. Her escort, fortunately for me, had not been Flavius Clemens but young Duillius Silanus, son of the consul, who had never met me before.



CHAPTER XXXIV

PALUS THE INCOMPARABLE

Within a very few days after my encounter with Vedia at Bambilio's dinner Falco and I had just ascended the stair of his residence after returning from a conference with Pullanius and his partners at which both sides had finally agreed on terms to the last detail and the contracts had been drawn up, executed, signed and sealed. He said:

"Phorbas, I am pleased with you. Such imposture as I have enticed you into cannot have been palatable to a man of your character. You have manifestly disrelished it, but you have valiantly stomached it for my sake. Actually you may be comforted, for it has not really been dishonest or dishonorable; you have only acted and spoken vicariously for Salinator: to a certainty he would have done and said just what you have, had he been present in person.

"You are a wonderful actor. No Greek or part Greek or half Greek or quarter Greek or thirty-second Greek I ever knew or heard of, clever as Greeks are at histrionics, could so perfectly act a Roman noble in every detail of demeanor, manner and word: down to the most trifling expression of every prejudice inherent in a Roman born. I admire you. Also I thank you.

"And I am as relieved as you will be to be able to tell you that your masquerade is at an end, successful and unsuspected.

"Now the important thing is for Salsonius Salinator to vanish from Rome at once.

"I suppose you have the wigs and false-beards you said you would buy or have made?"

"They are in my dressing-room," I replied.

"Then," he continued, "have yourself waked early, have your valet paint you and powder you and rouge you and fit you out with a wig like the head of hair you had before I made you impersonate Salinator, and with a false beard no one will suspect; have him rig you up in your favorite attire and load you with jewelry, then set off in my travelling-carriage for Baiae. Be out of Rome by sunrise. Travel straight to Baiae as rapidly as you find practicable without fatiguing yourself. At Baiae you will have the Villa and servants all to yourself. Stay there until you have grown your hair and beard as it was before your masquerade. Then return to Rome as Phorbas."

He paused, gazed at me and added:

"And I mean to make a new will. Besides leaving you your freedom and the legacy specified in my last will I mean to leave you my gem-collection and a full fourth of all my other estate. You deserve a lavish reward and I believe I love you better than any living human being."

I thanked him with my best imitation of the manner of a Greek, but with genuine feeling and from a full heart.

Actually I was glad to get out of Rome, glad to linger at Baiae. I made my time as long as I could and resisted several importunities from Falco before I finally returned to the city more than a year after I had left it. Thus I was out of Rome during the great fire, which destroyed, along with the Temple and Altar of Peace, the Temples of the Divine Julius and the Divine Augustus, the Temple of Vesta, the Atrium of Vesta and most of the other buildings about the great Forum, also the Porticus Margaritaria and the shop of Orontides. Strangely enough, when, at Baiae, I read letters from Falco, Tanno and Agathemer describing the devastation, my mind dwelt more on the annihilation of the shop where I had encountered Vedia than on the destruction of the Palace records and most of the public records, or of the many revered temples which had vanished in the flames.

When I returned to Rome the ruins were already largely cleared, and rebuilding, especially of the Temple of Vesta, was vigorously under way.

In Falco's household and manner of life I found few changes, except that Falco, really in excellent health, had become concerned about his trifling ailments, and, after trying one and another physician, had enrolled himself among the patients of the most distinguished exponent of the healing arts. Galen therefore, was a frequent visitor at my home and I saw him not infrequently. When I had some minor discomfort, Falco, always pampering me, called Galen in and enrolled me also among his charges.

After my return to the City the chief topic of conversation among persons of all grades of society and the pivot, so to speak, on which the spectacles of the amphitheater revolved was Palus the Gladiator.

I may set down here that I, personally, am now, as I was when I saw him appear as a charioteer for the last time, certain that Palus was Commodus in person. And I set this down as a fact. It will be seen later that I had more opportunity than any man in Rome, outside of the Palace, to know the facts.

Many people then believed and not a few still maintain that Palus was merely a crony of Commodus. Some whispered that he was a half-brother of Commodus, a son of Faustina and a favorite gladiator, brought up by the connivance of her too-indulgent husband; which wild tale suits neither with Faustina's actual deportment, as contrasted with the lies told of her by her detractors, nor with the character of Aurelius. Others even hinted that Palus was a half-brother of Commodus on the other side, off-spring of Aurelius and a concubine. This invention consorts still worse with the nature of Aurelius, who was one of the most uxorious of men and by nature monogamic and austere, almost ascetic. Some contented themselves with conjecturing that Palus accidentally resembled Commodus, which was not so far from the truth.

For I knew Ducconius Furfur from our boyhood and I solemnly assert that Palus was Commodus and that, whenever Palus appeared in the circus and, later, in the amphitheater, while the Imperial Pavilion was filled by the Imperial retinue, with the throne occupied apparently by the Emperor, the throne was occupied by a dummy emperor, Ducconius Furfur, in the Imperial attire, and Commodus was in the arena as Palus. Anyone who chooses may, from this pronouncement, set me down as a credulous ninny, if it suits his notions.

When Palus drove a chariot in the circus he never appeared with his face fully exposed, but invariably wore over its upper portion the half-mask of gauze, which is designed to protect a charioteer's eyes from dust and flying grains of sand. Similarly, when Palus entered the arena as a gladiator he never fought in any of those equipments in which gladiators appear bareheaded or with faces exposed: as a retiarius, for instance. He always fought as a secutor or murmillo, or in the armor proper to a Samnite, Thracian, or heavy-armed Greek or Gaul; all of which equipments include a heavy helmet with a vizor. Palus always fought with his vizor down.

It seems to me that the plain inference from these facts corroborates my opinions concerning Palus: certainly it strengthens my belief in my views. And these facts were and are known to be facts by all who, as spectators in the circus or in the amphitheater, beheld Palus as charioteer or as gladiator.

As a gladiator he was more than marvellous, he was miraculous. I was present at all his public appearances from the time of my return from Baiae. Also I had seen him closer, from the senatorial boxes in the amphitheater, three several times during my impersonation of Salsonius Salinator. Moreover I had seen him as a gladiator not a few times before that, since Falco, soon after we came to Rome from Africa, because of his affection for me and his tendency to indulge me in every imaginable way and to arrange for me every conceivable pleasure, had contrived to use the influence of some new-found friends to make possible my presence at shows in the Colosseum, and that in as good a seat as was accessible to any free-born Roman not a noble or senator.

The very first time I saw Palus in the arena I felt sure he was Commodus in person, for he had to a marvel every one of his characteristics of height, build, outline, agility, grace, quickness and deftness and all his tricks of attitude and movement. The two were too identical to be anything except the very same man.

It will occur to any reader of these memoirs that Palus was a left-handed fighter, and that Commodus not only fought left-handed, but wrote, by preference, with his left hand and with it more easily, rapidly and legibly than with his right. But I do not lay much stress on this for about one gladiator in fifty fights left-handed, so that the fact that Palus was left-handed, while it accords with my views, does not, in my opinion, help to prove them.

What, to my mind, much more tends to confirm my views, is the well-known fact that Palus was always equipped with armor and weapons more magnificent and more expensive than any ever seen on other gladiators. Everything he used or wore was of gold or heavily gilt; even his spear heads and sword blades were brilliantly gilded; so were his helmets, shields, bucklers, corselets, breastplates, the scales of his kilt-straps when he fought as a Greek, and his greaves, whether of Greek pattern or of some other fashion. If he appeared in an armament calling for arm-rings, leg-rings, or leg-wrappings, these were always also heavily gilt. So was his footgear, whether he wore thigh-boots, full-boots, half-boots, soldiers' brogues, half-sandals or sandals. His shoulder-guards (called "wigs" in the slang of the prize-ring) were, apparently, of pure cloth of gold, which also appeared to be the material of his aprons when his accoutrements did not include a kilt.

Now it may be said that this merely indicates that his equipment was the most extravagant instance of the manner in which opulent enthusiasts lavished their cash on the outfitting of their favorites in the arena. To me it seems too prodigal for the profusion of any or all of such spendthrifts: it appears to me more like the self-indulgence of the vainglorious master of the world. Palus often wore a helmet so bejeweled that its cost would have overtaxed the wealth of Didius Julianus.

I consider that my opinions are corroborated by the well-known fact that whenever Palus appeared as a gladiator in the amphitheater, Galen was present in the arena as chief of the surgeons always at hand to dress the wounds of victors or of vanquished men who had won the approbation or favor of the spectators or of the Imperial party. True, Galen was often there when Palus was not in the arena, for he was always on the watch for anatomical knowledge to be had from observation of dying men badly wounded. But, on the other hand, while he was often in the arena when Palus was not there, he was never absent when Palus was fighting.

Similarly, after Aemilius Laetus was appointed Prefect of the Palace, he was always present in person in the arena whenever Palus appeared in it. This, too, makes for my contentions.

The first fight in which I saw Palus revealed to me, and brought home to me with great force, the reason for his nickname, its origin and its astonishing appropriateness. The word "palus" has a number of very different meanings: manifestly its fitness as a pet name for the most perfect swordsman ever seen in any arena came from its use to denote the paling of a palisade, or any stake or post. Palus, in a fight, always appeared to stand still: metaphorically he might be said to seem as immobile as the post upon which beginners in the gladiatorial art practice their first attempts at strokes, cuts, thrusts and lunges. So little did he impress beholders as mobile, so emphatically did he impress them as stationary, that he might almost as well have been an upright stake, planted permanently deep in the sand.

I first saw him fight as a secutor, matched against a retiarius. This kind of combat is, surely, the most popular of all the many varieties of gladiatorial fights; and justly, for such fights are by far the most exciting to watch and their incidents perpetually varied, novel and unpredictable. It is exciting because the retiarius, nude except for one small shoulder-guard and a scanty apron, appears to have no chance whatever against the secutor with his big vizored helmet, his complete body-armor, his kilt of lapped leather straps plated with polished metal scales, his greaves or leg-rings or boots and his full-length, curved shield and Spanish sword. The secutor, always the bigger man and fully armed and armored, appears invincible against the little manikin of a retiarius skipping about bareheaded and almost naked and armed only with his trident, a fisherman's three-tined spear, with a light handle and short prongs, his little dagger and his cord net, which, when spread, is indeed large enough to entangle any man, but which he carries crumpled up to an inconspicuous bunch of rope no bigger than his head.

Yet the fact is the reverse of the appearance. No one not reckless or drunk ever bet even money on an ordinary secutor. The odds on the retiarius are customarily between five to three and two to one. And most secutors manifestly feel their disadvantage. As the two men face each other and the lanista gives the signal anyone can see, usually, that the retiarius is confident of victory and the secutor wary and cautious or even afraid. Dreading the certain cast of the almost unescapable net, the secutor keeps always on the move, and continually alters the direction and speed and manner of his movement, taking one short step and two long, then three short and one long, breaking into a dogtrot, slowing to a snail's-pace, leaping, twisting, curving, zigzagging, ducking and in every way attempting to make it impossible for the retiarius to foretell from the movement he watches what the next movement will be.

Palus behaved unlike any other secutor ever seen in the arena. He availed himself of none of the usual devices, which lanistae taught with such care, in the invention of which they gloried and in which they drilled their pupils unceasingly. He merely stood still and watched his adversary. The cunning cast of the deadly net he avoided by a very slight movement of his head or body or both. No retiarius ever netted him, yet the net seldom missed him more than half a hand's breadth. When the disappointed retiarius skipped back to the length of his net-cord and retrieved his net by means of it, Palus let him gather it up, never dashed at him, but merely stepped sedately towards him. If the retiarius ran away, Palus followed, but never in haste, always at a slow, even walk. No matter how often his adversary cast his net at him, Palus never altered his demeanor. The upshot was always the same. The spectators began to jeer at the baffled retiarius, he became flustered, he ventured a bit too near his immobile opponent, Palus made an almost imperceptible movement and the retiarius fell, mortally wounded.

I was never close enough to Palus to see clearly the details of his lunges, thrusts and strokes. I saw him best when I was a spectator in the Colosseum while impersonating Salsonius Salinator, for in my guise as colonial magnate I sat well forward. Even then I was not close enough to him to descry the finer points of his incomparable swordsmanship. Yet what I saw makes me regard as fairly adequate the current praises of him emanating from those wealthy enthusiasts who were reckoned the best judges of such matters. By the reports I heard they said that Palus never cut a throat, he merely nicked it, but the tiny nick invariably and accurately severed the carotid artery, jugular vein or windpipe.

I can testify, from my own observation, to his having displayed comparable skill in an equally effective stab in a different part of his adversary's body. As is well known, a deep slash of the midthigh, inside, causes death nearly as quickly as a cut throat; if the femoral artery is divided the blood pours out of the victim almost as from an inverted pail, a horrible cascade. Most of the acclaimed gladiators use often this deadly stroke against the inside midthigh, slashing it to the bone, leaving a long, deep, gaping wound. Palus never slashed an adversary's thigh; in killing by a thigh wound he always delivered a lunge which left a small puncture, but invariably also left the femoral artery completely severed, so that the life-blood gushed out in a jet astonishingly violent, the victim collapsing and dying very quickly. Such a parade requires altogether transcendant powers of accuracy from eye and hand.

Besides fighting as a secutor against a retiarius Palus in the same accoutrements fought with men similarly equipped, or accoutred as Greeks, Gauls, Thracians, Samnites, or murmillos; also he appeared in the equipment of each of these sorts of gladiators against antagonists equipped like himself or in any of the other fashions.

In all these countless fights he was never once wounded by any adversary nor did he ever deliver a second stroke, thrust or lunge against any: his defence was always impregnable, his attack always unerring; when he lunged his lunge never missed and was always fatal, unless he purposely spared a gallant foe.

Besides the exhibitions of bravado and self-confidence traditional with gladiators, all of which he displayed again and again, Palus devised more than one wholly original with himself.

For instance, he would take his stand in the arena equipped as a secutor, the lanista would have in charge not one retiarius, but ten, or even a dozen. One would attack Palus and when, after a longer or shorter contest, he was killed, the lanista, would, without any respite, allow a second to rush at Palus; then a third; and so on till everyone had perished by the secutor's unerring sword. No other secutor ever killed more than one retiarius without a good rest between the first fight and the second. Palus, as was and is well known, killed more than, a thousand adversaries, of whom more than three hundred wore the accoutrements of a retiarius.