Imperial Purple

. And when he looked from his home on the Palatine over the glitter of the Forum and the glare of the Capitol to the new and wonderful

and at whatever point he placed himself, Rome still lay beyond; a Rome quit

, and arenas in which an emperor could watch a multitude die; there were bronze doors and garden roofs, glancing villas and temples that defied the sun; there were spacious streets, a Forum cur

unimportant divinities, lying Jews who dealt in old clothes, in obscene pictures and unmentionable wares; at the crossings there were thimbleriggers, clowns and jugglers, who made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly; there were doorways decorated with curious invitations, gossipy barber shops, where, thro

examining the fish and meats, the enormous cauliflowers that came from the suburbs, Veronese carrots, Arician pears, stout thrushes, suckling pigs, eggs embedded in gr

and unguents, travelling boxes of scented wood, switches of yellow hair, useful drugs such as hemlock, aconi

ion strolled. There wealth passed in its chariots, smart young men

s tennis for those who liked it; racquets, polo, football, quoits, wrestling, everything apt to induce perspiration and prepare for the hour when a gong of bronze announced the opening of the baths-those wonderful baths, where the Roman, his slaves about him, after passing through steam and water and the hands of the masseur, had every hair plucked from his arms

ece. There, too, his eunuchs about him, Mecaenas lounged, companioned by Varus, by Horace and the mime Bathylle, all of whom he was accustomed to invite to tha

s neutralizes the fumes of wine-the guests lay, fanned by boys, whose curly hair they used for napkins. Under the supervision of butlers the courses were served on platters so large that they covered the tables; sows' breasts with Lybian truffles; dormice baked in poppies and honey, peacock-tongues flavored with cinnamon; oysters stewed in garum-a sauce made of the intestines of fish-sea-wolves from the Baltic; sturgeons from Rhodes; fig-peckers from Samos; African snails; pale beans in pink lard; and a yellow pig cooked after the Troan fashion, from which, when carved, hot sausages fell and live thrushes flew. Th

im one day, "do you know that it is important for you that

ld kill him when his hour had come; anarchy had been continuous; but now Rome was at rest and its sovereign wished to laugh. Made up of every nation and every vice, the universe was ransacked for its entertainment. The mountain sent its lions, the desert giraffes; there were boas from the jungles, bulls from the plains, and hippopotami from the waters of the Nile. Into the arenas patricians descended; in the amphitheatre there were crim

foremost a soldier, calling himself a descendant of Hercules whom he resembled; hailed at Ephesus as Bacchus, in Egypt as Osiris; Asiatic in lavishness, and Teuton in his capacity for drink; vomiting in the open Forum, and making and unmaking kings; weaving with that viper of the Nile a romance wh

r husband's secrets; exiling his daughter, not because she had lovers, but because she had other lovers than himself; exiling Ovid because of Livia, who in the end poisoned her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of speech, and coars

on begged for mercy. He promised forgiveness to the son on condition that he killed his father. The son accepted and did the work; then he had the son despatched. A prisoner begged but for a grave. "The vultures will see to it," he answered. When at the head of Caesar's legions, he entered Rome to avenge the latter's death, he announced beforehand that he would imitate neither Caesar's moderation nor Sylla's cruelty. There would be only a few proscriptions, a

ne day, "but not to your solecisms." Undeterred he began a tragedy entitled "Ajax," and discovering his incompetence, gave it up. "And what has become of Ajax?" a parasite ask

a statue, recumbent, in wax, made after his image and dressed in imperial robes. Near by a little slave with a big fan protected the statue from flies. Each day physicians came, gazed at the closed wax

orian guard. Then, to the alternating choruses of boys and girls, the rotting body passed down the Sacred Way. Behind it Tiberius in a travelling-cloak, his hands unringed, marched meditating on the curiosities o

oke and sawdust, the exterior covered with illuminated cloths, on which, for base, a tower rose, three storeys high.

moment, and disappeared. For the sum of a million sesterces a s