If such a thing ever occurred, certainly there is no
record of any other nobleman domiciled in Italy, except myself, having
grasped at the slender chance of escape afforded by the device of
arranging that he be supposed dead, of disguising himself, of vanishing
among the populace, of passing himself off for a man of the people. I not
only was led, by my clever slave, to attempt this histrionic feat, but I
succeeded in the face of unimaginable difficulties. An experience so
notably without a parallel seems peculiarly deserving of such a record as
follows.
BOOK I
DISASTER
CHAPTER I
AN UNEXPECTED GUEST
When I look back on the beginning of my adventures, I can set the very day
and hour when the tranquil course of my early life came to an end, when
the comfortable commonplaces of my previous existence altered, when the
placid current of my former life broke suddenly and without warning into
the tumultuous rapids which hurried me from surprise to surprise and from
peril to peril. The last hour of my serene youth was about the ninth of
the day, nearly midafternoon, on the Nones of June in the 937th year of
the city, [Footnote: A.D. 184. See Note C.] while Cossonius Marullus and
Papirius Aelian were consuls, when Commodus had already been four years
Emperor.
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