Teams tugging wains carrying
the heaviest cages containing unusually large elk, boars, bears or bulls,
had had to go by way of Milan and had been put to it to keep their teams
fit for a journey of over seven hundred miles.
Besides the difference in weight of the loads, chiefly depending on the
needed strength of the cages, I found that their divergence of routes was
due, in part, to the efforts which the procurator of all this teaming had
made to avoid choking the roads. The teamsters averred that they knew
nothing as to why the beasts were being brought this way; and no more as
to why animals brought all the way from Africa to Aquileia, a voyage far
longer than the voyage to Rome, should then be conveyed overland from,
Aquileia to the Colosseum.
I enjoyed idling about the teamsters' camps chatting with them and the
attendants who cared for the beasts. One hot evening, just about sunset,
when I was already thinking of riding off home to bathe and dine, while I
was lingering to watch his keepers urging their little gang of slaves to
pour more and more water over a gasping hippopotamus, there was a yell of
alarm all along the line and a scampering, scattering rush of fleeing men;
teamsters, attendants and keepers.
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