CHARIOTEERING
Sight-seeing in Rome, in the guise of Gallic wastrels, under the tutelage of a harborside slum host, was truly an experience for me after my former station as a nobleman of the Republic, and my ruin and disguise and flight. I positively enjoyed it.
First of all Colgius was for showing us over the stables of the Reds, for he was mad about racing and boasted that he had bet on the Reds since he was six years old and his father gave him his first copper. But I demurred and pointed out that none of the racing-stables were fit places for us, since a steady stream of Spanish horses trickled through Marseilles and on through Vada Sabatia and Genoa to Rome, and there was too great a probability that we might come face to face with some groom, hostler or hanger-on from Marseilles who would know us at sight. Colgius yielded to this argument and agreed that we must avoid all the racing stables. This greatly relieved us, since, while neither I nor Agathemer had been devotees of the sport, both of us had been through all six establishments often enough to be likely to be recognized in any one of them.
Baffled in his first choice and, apparently, in his only choice, Colgius asked us what we wanted to see. I said I wanted most to see a day of racing in the circus, blurting out this rather foolish utterance without reflection, merely because I thought it would seem natural to him. He replied that that would be easy, but that the next racing day was day after tomorrow: what would we like to do today?
I said I wanted first of all to be shown the Temple of Mercury, for I wanted to make an offering to the god.
"Oh, yes," he said, "Mercury is your chief god in Gaul, isn't he, and you put him ahead of Jupiter. What is it you call him?"
"You are thinking of the Belgians," I said, "and of the Gauls in the Valley of the Liger. They call Mercury Tiv or Tir and regard him as their chief god. But we provincials never had any such ideas: we worship the same gods as you, in the same way. But I, personally, while revering Jupiter as king of the gods, have always particularly sought the favor of Mercury."
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.