Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Part 49

Worse than this, he said, Perennis was plotting the Emperor's a.s.sa.s.sination and the elevation to the Princ.i.p.ate of one of his two sons.

This project of his, which he was furthering by astute secret machinations, had come to the knowledge of a loyal member of the Emperor's retinue. He had written of it to a brother of his, Centurion [Footnote: See Note D.] of the Thirteenth Legion, ent.i.tled "Victorious" and quartered on the Wall, along the northern frontier of Britain, towards the Caledonian Highlands. This letter had reached the quarters of the Thirteenth Legion late in September. Its recipient had at once communicated to his fellow-sergeants the horrible intimation which it contained. They had resolved to do all in their power to save their Prince by forestalling and foiling the treacherous Perennis. They had called a meeting of their garrison and disclosed their information to their men.

The legionaries acclaimed their decision. Deputations set out east and west along the Wall and roused the other cohorts of the Thirteenth Legion and those of the Twenty-Seventh. From the Wall messengers galloped south to the garrisons throughout Britain. In an incredibly short time, despite the approach and onset of winter, they apprised every garrison in the island. Messengers from every garrison reached every garrison. So rapidly was mutual comprehension and unanimity established, so secretly did they operate, that on the Nones of January all the garrisons in Britain simultaneously mutinied, overpowered their unsuspecting officers, disclosed to them the reasons for their sedition, and invited them to join them. Of all the officers on the island only two hesitated to agree with their men. These, after some expostulation, were killed. The rest resumed their duties, if competent, or were relegated to civilian life, if adjudged incompetent.

The three most prominent legions in Britain, the Sixth, Thirteenth and Twentieth, each ent.i.tled, because of prowess displayed in past campaigns, to the appellation of "Victorious," selected the equivalent of a cohort apiece to unite into a deputation representing the soldiery of Britain collectively, to proceed to Rome, reveal to the Emperor his danger, save him, foil Perennis, and see to it that he was put to death. In pursuance of this plan the six centuries chosen by the Thirteenth Legion, about five hundred men, had set out southward from the Wall on the day before the Ides of January. Accomplis.h.i.+ng the march of a hundred and thirty-five miles to Eburac.u.m, in spite of deep snow and heavy snow-storms, in fourteen days, there they foregathered with the main body of the Sixth Legion and were joined by their six selected centuries. The twelve, some thousand picked men, accomplished the march of eighty-five miles to Deva in nine days, though hampered by terrible weather. There they were joined by the delegates of the Twentieth Legion. Together the fifteen hundred deputies made the march of two hundred and eighty miles to Ritupis by way of Londinium, in twenty-eight days. At Ritupis they took part in the festival of Isis, by which navigation was declared open for the year and navigation blessed. Next day, on the day before the Nones of March, they had sailed for Gaul and made the crossing in ten hours, without any hindrance from headwinds or bad weather.

From Gessoriac.u.m they had tramped across Gaul, inducing to join them such kindred spirits as they encountered among the squads of recent levies being drilled at each large town preparatory to being forwarded to reinforce the frontier garrisons. These inexperienced recruits they had organized into centuries under sergeants elected by the recruits themselves from among themselves, which elective centurions had handily learnt their novel duties from instructions given by one or two veterans detailed to aid in drilling each new century. Before they reached Vapinc.u.m they had a.s.sociated with them fresh comrades equalling themselves in number, equipped from town a.r.s.enals. With these they had crossed into Italy through the Cottian Alps.

At Segusio they had been told that, under the misrule of Perennis, the _ergastula_ of Italy were filled, not half with runaway slaves, petty thieves, rascals, ruffians and outlaws, but mainly with honest fellows who had committed no crime, but had been secretly arrested and consigned to their prisons merely because they had incurred the displeasure of Perennis or of one of his henchmen, or had been suspected, however vaguely, of actions, words or even of unspoken opinions distasteful to him or to anyone powerful through him. Acting on that information they had been setting free the inmates of _ergastula_ in cities through which they had pa.s.sed, such as Turin and Milan, and had formed from these victims two fresh centuries. They proposed that we join them and march with them to Rome to inform and rescue our Emperor and foil and kill Perennis.

Of course the liberated riffraff accepted this suggestion with enthusiasm and without a dissenting voice. We were divided into squads of convenient size and marched off to the near-by bathing establishments. In that to which Agathemer and I were led, we, with the rest of our squad, were told by the sergeant superintending us to strip. Our worn, tattered and lousy garments were turned over to the bath-attendants to be steamed and then disposed of as they might. We were thoroughly steamed and scrubbed, so that every man of us was freed from every sort of vermin. During our bath the centurion, in charge of us un.o.btrusively inspected us individually and collectively. In the dressing-room of the bathing establishments, after we had been steamed, scrubbed, baked, and dried, we were clad in military tunics fetched from the town a.r.s.enal or its store-houses. Also we were provided with military boots of the coa.r.s.est and cheapest materials, made after the pattern usual for frontier regiments.

Outside the bath the watchful sergeant divided us into two squads, a larger and a smaller, the smaller made up of those who, like Agathemer and me, bore brands, and scourge-marks. In the market-square we were again herded together, surrounded by the British legionaries and now ourselves divided into those like me and Agathemer, who were marked as runaway slaves and the larger number who showed no marks of scourge or brand. From among the unmarked the frontier centurions picked out thirty whom they judged likely material for sergeants like themselves. These thirty they bade select from among themselves three. Then they set the three, an Umbrian and a Ligurian outlaw, and a Dalmatian pirate, along the front of the stone platform and asked us whether we would accept those three as our centurions. Two speakers, one a Venetian and the other an Insubrian Gaul, objected to the pirate. In his place we were bidden to choose some other from the twenty-seven already selected by the sergeants. A second Umbrian outlaw was selected.

Then the centurions bade the newly-elected three to choose each one man in rotation, until they had made up for each the nucleus of a century from the unmarked men.

After the three new centuries were thus const.i.tuted, they asked them to decide whether they would accept as comrades and a.s.sociates the residue of the inmates of our _ergastulum_ who were marked plainly as runaway slaves.

They voted overwhelmingly to accept us. Then the three new sergeants proceeded to choose us also into their centuries. The choosing was interrupted by a Ravenna Gaul, who called the attention of the a.s.sembly to the fact that Agathemer had been cook to the _ergastulum_ and I his helper; similarly to the baker and his a.s.sistant. After some discussion it was unanimously voted that the baker and his helper be treated as any others of the liberated rascals, that the three new centurions draw lots which should have Agathemer for cook to his century and me for his helper, and that the other two centuries appoint cooks by lot unless cooks and helpers volunteered. Four of the brand-marked rabble at once volunteered.

After the last man had been selected and the British centurions had marshalled, inspected and approved the three new centuries thus const.i.tuted, we were marched off to the town a.r.s.enal and there equipped with corselets, strap-kilts, greaves; cloaks, helmets, s.h.i.+elds, swords and spears; only Agathemer, I, and the four other cooks and helpers, were given no spears, s.h.i.+elds, helmets or body-armour, only swords, jackets and caps.

Then, full-fledged tumultary legionaries, we were marshalled as well as greenhorns could be ranked and we marched from the market-place the length of the street leading to the Fidentia Gate. Outside it we found the semblance of a camping-ground and tents ready for us to set up. Up we set them, we new recruits, clumsily, under the jeers of the old-timers, to the tune of taunts and curses from the disgusted veteran centurions.

When the camp was set up a fire was made for each century and we cooks and helpers fell to our duties, with a squad of privates to cut wood, feed the fires, fetch water and do any other rough preparatory work, such as butchering a sheep or a goat, killing, picking and cleaning fowls, and what not. For this welcome, if clumsy, a.s.sistance we had to thank one of the British centurions, who admonished our newly-elected Umbrian sergeant that camp-cookery called for any needed number of a.s.sistant helpers to the chief cook if the men were to be fed properly and promptly.

The town officials had sent out to the camp a generous provision of wheat, barley, lentils, pulse, sheep, goats, fowls, cheese, oil, salt and wine. I did not learn how the volunteer cooks fared, but the barley-stew, seasoned with minced fowls, which Agathemer concocted, was acclaimed by our century.

That night, in our tent, Agathemer and I, talking Greek and whispering, discussed our situation. After two fulfillments, the prophesy of the Aemilian Sibyl seemed in a fair way to be fulfilled a third time; we were headed for Rome.

To Rome we went. We had, in that first consultation, in many similar consultations later, planned to escape and hoped to escape. But we were too carefully watched. Whether we were suspected because of our scourge- marks and brand-marks, or were prized as cooks, or whether there was some other reason, we could not conjecture. Certainly we were sedulously guarded on all marches, and kept strictly within, each camp, though we were free to wander about each camp as we pleased.

We had planned to escape in or near Parma, Mutina, Bononia, or Faventia, any of which towns Agathemer judged a favorable locality for marketing a gem from our amulet-bags. But in these, as everywhere else, our guards gave us no chance of escape.

When not busy cooking I found myself greatly interested in the amazing company among which I was cast. In my rambles about our camp, when all were full-fed and groups sat or lay chatting about the slackening camp- fires, I became acquainted with most of the eighteen centurions from the legions quartered in Britain, and had talks, sometimes even long talks, with more than half of them. These bluff, burly frontier sergeants, like their corporals and men, treated all their volunteer a.s.sociates as welcome comrades, even welted and branded runaway slaves acting as cooks.

From them I heard again and again the story of discontent, conspiracy, mutiny, insurrection and attempt at protest about rectification of the evils they believed to exist, which tale we had all heard outlined by the sergeant-orator in the Forum of Placentia.

Among the eighteen centurions there was no sergeant-major nor any centurion of the upper rank. The highest in army rank was s.e.xtius Baculus of Isca, a native of Britain and lineally descended, through an original colonist of Isca, from the celebrated sergeant-major of the Divine Julius.

He had been twelfth in rank in the Sixth Legion, being second centurion of its second cohort. Not one of his seventeen a.s.sociates had ranked so high: the next highest being Publius Cordatus, of Lindum, who had been second sergeant of the fourth cohort in the Twentieth Legion.

The totality of my mental impressions of what I heard from these two and other members of this incredible deputation of insurgent mutineers and of what I saw of the doings of the whole deputation, was vague and confused.

From the confusion emerged a predominating sense of their many inconsistencies and of the haphazard irresponsibility and inconsequence of their states of mind and actions. They were, indeed, entirely consistent in one respect. Unlike Maternus and his men, not one of them blamed Commodus for anything, not even for having appointed Perennis to his high office and then having permitted him to arrogate to himself all the functions of the government of the Republic and Empire. One and all they excused the Emperor and expressed for him enthusiastic loyalty: one and all they blamed not only the Prefect's mismanagement but also his own appointment on Perennis. Consistent as they were in holding these opinions or in having such feelings, the notions were inconsistent in themselves.

So likewise was their often expressed and manifestly sincere intention to forestall the consummation of the alleged conspiracy and save the Emperor inconsistent with their slow progress from Britain towards Rome. Never having been in Britain and knowing little of it from such reports as I had heard, I could not controvert their a.s.sertion that the state of the roads and weather there had made impossible greater speed than they had achieved from their quarters to their port, yet I suspected that men really systematically in earnest might have accomplished in twenty days marches which had occupied them for fifty-one days. I was certain that it was nothing short of ridiculous for legionaries in hard fighting condition and well fed to consume one hundred and one days in marching from their landing-port on the coast of Gaul to Placentia: ten miles a day was despicable marching even for lazy and soft-muscled recruits; any legionaries should make fifteen, miles at day under any conditions, earnest men keyed up to hurry should have made twenty and might often march twenty-five miles between camps. These blatherskites were on fire with high resolve, by their talk, yet had loafed along for a thousand miles, camping early, sleeping long after sunrise, resting at midday and gorging themselves at leisurely meals. All this was amazing.

Equally astonis.h.i.+ng was the condition of supineness, of all governmental officials in Gaul, local and Imperial, as their tale revealed it. Neither the Prefect of the Rhine, nor any one of the Procurators of Gaul, had, as far as their story indicated, made any effort to arrest them, turn them back, stop them, check them, hinder them or even have them expostulated with. As far as I could infer from all I heard neither had the governing body of any city or town. For all they were interfered with by any official they might have been full-time veterans, honorably discharged, marching homeward under accredited officers provided with diplomas properly made out, signed, sealed and stamped. Everywhere they had been fed at public expense, lodged free or provided with camping-grounds and tents; their pack-animals had been replaced if worn out, and everything they needed had been provided on their asking for it or even before they made any request. I could only infer that they had inspired fear by their numbers and truculence and that each town or district had striven to keep them in a good humor and to get rid of them as soon as possible by entertaining them lavishly and speeding them along their chosen way.

As they told of their own behavior there had been no consistency or system or method in their additions to their company. By their own account they had enticed men to join them or had ignored likely recruits in the most haphazard fas.h.i.+on, purely as the humor struck them. The like was true of their emptyings of _ergastula_ in Italy. At Turin, as well as I could gather from my chats with this or that centurion or soldier or liberated slave, they had set free the inmates of the _ergastulum_ by the Segusio Gate and had then turned aside to that by the Vercellae Gate, but had ignored the larger _ergastulum_ by the Milan Gate; though they had marched out of Turin, necessarily, by that gate. Similarly at Milan, they had emptied two _ergastula_ and ignored the rest; as at Placentia, where they had expended all their time and energy on the first _ergastulum_ they happened on inside the Milan Gate and on ours, and then had ignored or forgotten the four or five others, equally large and equally well filled.

On our progress to Rome I saw similar inconsistencies in their behavior.

They never so much as entered Fidentia, but marched round it, acquiescent to the gentle suggestion of a trembling and incoherent alderman, quaking with fear and barely able to enunciate some disjointed sentences. At Parma they emptied two _ergastula_ and never so much as approached the others, repeating this inconsistency at Mutina and Bononia. Outside of Faventia something, I never learned what, enraged a knot of the veterans, so that their fury communicated itself to all the soldiery from Britain and inflamed their a.s.sociates, Gallic and Italian. Whereupon we burst the Bononia Gate of Faventia, flocked into the town, sacked some of the shops, left a score of corpses in the market-place and some in the streets near it, set fire to a block of buildings, and burst out of the Ariminum Gate, tumultuous and excited, but without so much as trying the outer doors of any _ergastulum_.

Yet, after this riotous performance, we did no damage at Ariminum, not even entering the town, not even enquiring if it had an _ergastulum_, as it must have had.

Similarly at Pisaurum, at Fanum Fortunae, at Forum Semp.r.o.nii, though these were small towns and could not have resisted us, we camped outside, accepted gracefully the tents and food provided for us and made no move to maltreat anyone or do any looting. But at Nuceria, at Spolitum and at Narnia we entered the towns and liberated the inmates of two of the _ergastula_, in each, though we never so much as threatened Interamnia.

Looking back over these proceedings I explain them to myself approximately as follows: the eighteen centurions from Britain treated each other as if they all felt on terms of complete mutual equality, none ever a.s.sumed any rights of superiority, seniority, precedence, or authority, none was ever invested with any right of permanent or temporary leaders.h.i.+p. If some whim prompted any one of the eighteen to take the lead in emptying an _ergastulum_ or breaking in a town gate, or sacking a shop, not one of his fellow-sergeants demurred or expostulated or opposed him; they all concurred in any suggestion of any one of them. And the soldiers followed their centurions with, apparently, implicit confidence in them, or a blind instinct of deference. So of submission to the request of any town decurion, that they stay outside: mostly, they were acquiescent. But if something irritated a sergeant, or even a soldier, the entire deputation flamed into fury and burst gates, sacked shops and even fired buildings until their rage spent itself, after which they were civil and kindly to all townsmen, whether officials, citizens, slaves or women and children. I never could detect any reason for any action or inaction of theirs.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE EMPEROR

The liberations of public slaves from _ergastula_ in Turin, Milan, Placentia, Parma, Mutina, Bononia, Nuceria, Spolitum and Narnia resulted in the formation of eighteen tumultuary centuries, which, between Narnia and Ocriculum, during a long noon-halt, were formed into the semblance of three cohorts, thus we approached Rome as nine cohorts: three of the deputies from Britain; three more of the recruits from Gaul, presumably like the British legionaries, loyal patriots, bent on foiling Perennis, and saving their beloved Emperor; and three more composed of the contents of a dozen or more _ergastula_, opened as the whim took the veteran sergeants, and a.s.sumed to contain not pilferers, runaways or evil-doers, but innocent victims of the malignity of the understrappers of that unspeakable Perennis.

As we drew near Rome Agathemer and I discussed our situation and prospects with increasing alarm. After we left Narnia the watch on us was not so close and we might have escaped. But we had seen a score of attempts at escape, by various rascals, foiled and ending in the butchery of the would-be fugitives. While escape was possible the risk was very great.

Also, Agathemer argued, we were too near to Rome to be safe if we got clear away. Between dread of death if caught and fear of we knew not what if we escaped, we stuck to our cookery. Mixed with our projects for bettering our prospects we talked much of our amazement at the treatment which the deputation and its a.s.sociates had met in Italy. Manifestly the townsfolk and their officials were not only overawed, but helpless. If there had been no Rome, no Republic, no Praetorians, no Prefect of the Palace, no central authority whatever we could not have been more completely free from hindrance, coercion or question, Yet Agathemer and I could not but conjecture that the Senate, Perennis and Commodus had been promptly and minutely informed of all our doings, of our progress, of our approach; and had taken measures to deal with us and our instigators. We felt panicky.

Spouting long tirades about their loyalty to the Emperor, their hatred of Perennis and their eagerness to foil one and save the other, our irresponsible frontier centurions let their men and us loiter southward through Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria as they had loitered on the other side of the Alps, seldom marching more than ten miles a day. So that we left Ocriculum on the tenth day before the Kalends of August and stopped overnight at each change-station.

We had had fair weather all the way from Placentia, except a heavy rain at Ariminum and showers in the mountains between Forum Semp.r.o.nii and Nuceria.

When day dawned on us at Rostrata Villa, on the eighth day before the Kalends of August, it dawned cloudy, but not threatening. After the usual camp breakfast of porridge and wine, we fell in, by now fairly decent marchers, and set off for Rubrae. But before we had marched a mile, the low clouds soaked us with such a downpour as I had seldom seen of a July morning near Rome. So heavy and so unrelenting was the rain that we were glad to halt at the change-house at the twentieth mile-stone, where the road from Capena to Veii crosses the Flaminian Highway and where there is a prosperous village as large as many a small town. There we found quarters and food ready for us and were well entertained. Ad Vicesimum, as the place is called, is only four miles nearer Rome than Villa Rostrata.

It was about midway of that four-mile march in the pouring rain that I saw by the roadside three immobile hors.e.m.e.n, their forms swathed in hors.e.m.e.n's rain-cloaks, their faces hidden under broad-brimmed rain-hats, lined up with their horses' noses barely a horse-length from the roadway, watching from a little knoll our column as it pa.s.sed. The middle horseman of the three looked familiar. I glanced back at him and met his eyes, intensely watching me from under his dripping hat brim, as I trudged on the edge of the trudging rabble. A hot qualm surged through me. It was, it certainly was, the very same man I had seen in the very same guise on the road below Villa Andivia as Tanno and I pa.s.sed by on our way to our fatal brawl at Vediamnum; the very man who had peered in at me and Capito during his fatal conference with me in Nemestronia's water-garden, the man whom Tanno had a.s.serted that he knew for an Imperial spy. I felt recognition in his gaze; felt that he knew me for my very self. And his nose was hooked.

At our halting place, when Agathemer and I were alone, I asked him in Greek if he had noticed the three stationary hors.e.m.e.n. He at once, without my mentioning my suspicions, declared that he also had recognized the middle horseman precisely as I had. What his presence there might forbode, what his apparent recognition of me might portend, we could not conjecture. We agreed that, although both of us had been on the lookout for Imperial emissaries all the way from Placentia, and alertly watching from Ariminum southwards, this was the first time we had set eyes on any man whom we could take for a secret-service man. That so much time had elapsed since the authorities must have been warned of our approach, that we should have advanced so near Rome and yet that this should be the first visible indication of espionage upon us, amazed both me and Agathemer.

Next day, a cloudy but rainless day, we marched only to Rubrae, the change-station nearest Rome. There, as at every previous halt, we found the authorities apprised of our approach and prepared to lodge and feed us. And, as always since we left Nuceria, we were comfortably sheltered in a camp all ready for our occupancy and lavishly provided with varied food and pa.s.sable wine.

Next day, the sixth day before the Kalends of August, dawned exquisitely fair and bright, with a soft steady breeze; a perfect July day, mild but not too warm. Our elected sergeants, now quite habituated to their duties and authority as centurions, routed us up early and, after a leisurely camp-breakfast, we fell in and set off on the last stage of this amazing unopposed march of fifteen hundred insurgent mutineers for nineteen hundred miles, in making which they had so loitered that they had consumed on the road more than half a year and along which they had added to their company casual a.s.sociates twice as numerous as themselves. We left Rubrae an excited horde, for the veterans were keyed up to a tense pitch of expectancy by their antic.i.p.ation of they knew not what culmination to their insane adventure and their accidental recruits were aquiver with uneasiness and apprehension.

The Mulvian Bridge over the Tiber is not more than four miles from Rubrae along the winding Flaminian Highway and we were crossing it before the third hour of the day was past. Marching with the first of the three centuries formed at Placentia I had about five-sixths of our column ahead of me. So I did not see, did not even glimpse, did not, from far towards the rear, so much as guess what was happening. I knew only that, as I was more than half way across the Mulvian Bridge, a wave of cheers started far forward in our column and ran back to my century and all the way to the rearmost men. What had occurred we did not know, but we broke ranks and flowed out of the road to left and right, as did the men ahead of us, becoming almost a mob, despite the remonstrances and orders of our disgusted sergeants. They restrained us to some extent, but we were kept back more by the fact that the foremost men blocked the highway, the men who had been marching next them blocked the fields to right and left of the highway and the rest of us were checked behind them, like water above a dam.

As we stood there, packed together, with hardly a semblance of ranks kept anywhere, craning to see over the heads of the men in front of us and to try to see past and between the many big and tall tombs and mausoleums which flanked the road on either side, a period of tense silence or blurred murmurings was ended by a second great surge of cheers from front to rear. We all cheered till we were hoa.r.s.e. Again we peered and listened and questioned each other, again came a roar of cheering like a sea billow. Again and again alternated the half silence and the uproar. Before we learned what was happening or had happened word came from mouth to mouth that we were going on. The press in front of us gradually melted away, we were able to sidle into the roadway, reform ranks and tramp on Romewards.

After a very brief march we turned aside to our right into a meadow on the west of the road and its flanking rows of tombs, between the Highway and the Tiber, about half way from Mulvian Bridge to the Flaminian Gate of Rome; that is, about half a mile from each. There we found a meticulously laid-out and perfectly appointed camp, precisely suited to the forty-five hundred of us and our requisitioned mules, wagons and what not. It contained some four hundred and fifty tents, set on clipped gra.s.s along rolled and gravelled streets as straight as bricklayers' guide-boards; all about a paved square of ample size, on the rear of which was set up a gorgeous commander's tent of the whitest canvas, striped with red almost as deep, rich and glowing as the Imperial crimson, and manifestly meant to imitate it as closely as such a dyestuff could. On either side of this Praetorium were a dozen tents, smaller indeed than the Praetorium, but much larger than tents set up for us, presumably for the commanders'

aides. In front of the Praetorium, between it and the square, was a wide, broad and high platform of new brickwork, paved on top, railed with solid, low, carved railings set in short carved oak posts. The corner posts, and two others dividing the front and back of the platform equally, were tall and supported an awning of striped canvas like that of the commander's tent.

Goggling with curiosity we, as we deployed to our quarters, stared hard at the magnificent tent and sumptuous platform with its gorgeous awning. Once at our quarters, I and Agathemer, of course, must cook and serve food to our century. Only after all were fed did we, in common with all the middle and rear of our road-column, learn what had occurred.

While we ate, our sergeants, while they also ate somehow, held a centurions' council, at which those of the fifty-four who had not been far enough forward on the Highway to see and hear were informed, by those who had, of what had happened. When our sergeant returned from this council he told us, in a jumbled and mumbled attempt at an address.

From what he told me and from what I heard later I gather that, as the column debouched from the bridge, its head was met and checked by a body of mounted Praetorian Guards. Their tribune, in the name of the Emperor, ordered the column to halt and bade its centurions deploy their men right and left and ma.s.s them in a largish s.p.a.ce free of big tombs. As they deployed the Praetorians also deployed to left and right of the Highway and the foremost mutineers descried on the roadway the splendid horses and gorgeous trappings of the Emperor's personal staff, among whom, from the statues, busts and painted panel-portraits of him which they had seen daily in their own quarters and countless times on their road to Rome, the more alert of them recognized their liege.

Then rose that unexpected wave of cheering which had first apprized us in the rear that something unusual was toward. Commodus, as I heard from Publius Cordatus himself, after our nap and before the Emperor's return, was mounted on a tall sorrel such as his father had always preferred on his frontier campaigns. Also he was garbed not only as his father had habitually been when on frontier expeditions, but seemingly, in one of his old outfits. For not only Cordatus, but a dozen more, declared that his helmet, corselet and the plates of his kilt-straps, were of ungilded, unchased, plain steel, not even bright with polis.h.i.+ng, but tarnished, all but rusty, with exposure to rain, mist and sun; his plume and cloak rain- faded and sun-faded till their crimson showed almost brown; his scabbard plain, dingy leather; his saddle of similar cheap, durable leather, his saddle-cloth of a crimson faded as brown as his cloak and plume. This was precisely the Spartan simplicity which Aurelius, as more than half a Stoic, had always affected, partly from an innate tendency towards self- restraint and modesty, partly that his example might, at first, offset the sumptuosity of Verus and, after his death, might inculcate, by example, economy in his lavish and self-indulgent retinue.

Whatever the motive, by this semi-histrionic effort at self-effacement the Emperor made himself tenfold conspicuous among his staff-officers, whose plumes, cloaks, kilts, and saddle-cloths blazed with crimson, green and gold, blue and silver and even crimson and gold.