Like all gentlemen I had always loathed the hot, heavy things. But I
found myself positively thrill at being again garbed as befits a Roman on
a holiday or at a ceremonial. Besides I found that a toga, over a poor
man's tunic, was not nearly so uncomfortable as it was over the more
complicated garb of a fashionable person of means and position.
The interior of the Circus, from my novel location, appeared sufficiently
strange to lull my dread that I might seem too familiar with it. Of course
we were very far back, only five rows in front of the arcade, whereas as
long as I was a nobleman of Rome in good standing, I had always sat in the
second tier, far forward.
But what made much more difference than sitting far back and high up
instead of well forward and low down was that we were on the other side of
the Circus from my old seat and almost directly opposite it. I had always
sat in section E, about the middle of the east side of the Circus and not
far from the Imperial Pavilion in section C. We were in section P,
directly facing E, and not far from the judges' stand in section O.
Now from where I had been used to sitting, facing a little south of west,
I had viewed only the tiers of seats and of spectators, the upper arcade,
and, above that the roofs of the not very lofty, large or magnificent
temples on the Aventine Hill.
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