"
Off we went to the meat market and I bought there two white hens, as on
the day of my flight, more than a year before. With one under each arm I
then followed Colgius to the Temple of Mercury and there made my prayers
and offering.
When we came out he, of course, began to display the outside of the Great
Circus and to tell me of its glories, which, he said, he would show me
from the inside the day after tomorrow. The life there was much as
Maternus and I had seen it twenty-three days before.
We could not avoid following Colgius about Rome, round the Palatine, the
Colosseum and the Baths of Titus and through the Forums of Vespasian,
Nerva, Augustus and Trajan. At Trajan's Temple he reiterated his regrets
that we dare not go on to the stables of the Reds, and turned back through
Trajan's Forum, the Forum of the Divine Julius and the Great Forum. Of
course, I was quaking with dread for fear some lifelong acquaintance would
recognize me, even in my coarse attire. But none did: in fact I set eyes
on no one I knew, except Faltonius Bambilio, who was pompously lecturing
ten victims in the Ulpian Basilica. I was certain that his eyes were only
on his auditors; the sight of him did not alarm me, he never paid any
attention to those he considered his inferiors.
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