We journeyed to Rome with as much hurry as could be made by such a beast- train, which was very slowly for men on good horses. We made excursions up crossroads, idled at inns, were entertained at villas and I decidedly enjoyed the beginning of my life as Festus the Beast-Tamer. We were fourteen full days on the road.
I had time to meditate on the fifth fulfillment of the prophecy of the
Aemilian Sibyl. Also I had time to offer two white hens to Mercury at
Nuceria, at Spolitum, at Interamnia, at Narnia and at Ocriculum.
Towards sunset just before our last night's halt out of the city, from a hilltop on the highway, I had a glorious view of Rome bathed in mellow evening sunlight, much as I had viewed it when I came down the same highroad with the mutineers from Britain. As always this unsurpassable sight filled me with intense emotions.
We entered Rome, of course, by the Flaminian Gate and at dawn. Before sunrise I was in the great mass of buildings variously known as the Choragium, the Therotheca, the Animal Mansions and the Beast-Barracks. These were mostly of many stories, the ground-level used for the beasts, the second floor for their keepers and attendants, the cage-cleaners, the overseers, and the rest of the army of men who cared for the animals, and the upper floors utilized as store-rooms for all sorts of weapons, armor, costumes, implements and apparatus used in and for the spectacles; swords, spears, arrows, shields, helmets, breast-plates, corselets, kilts, greaves, boots, cloaks, tunics, poles, rope, pulleys, winches, jack- screws, derricks, wagons, carts, and the like.
The jumble of buildings was without any sort of general plan. Apparently a courtyard and the structures about it had been found necessary for housing the beasts and their attendants and had been bought by the management of the Colosseum. When it was overtaxed, as the number of animals exhibited increased, an adjacent property had been acquired and annexed. So the Choragium had been created and extended till it now covered many acres and had many courtyards, all arcaded on all sides. Under the arcades were set as many cages as they could accommodate; when the beasts were too numerous for their cages to be all under the arcades some were stood out in the courtyards.
I was comfortably housed in light, airy, roomy, clean and well-furnished quarters on one of the biggest courtyards. From dawn after my first night's sleep there I was busy quelling vicious beasts so their cages could be cleaned; keeping others quiet while the beast-surgeons dressed wounds inflicted by their captors or keepers or sores caused by their confinement; inducing others to swallow the remedies the animal-doctors thought good for them; leading beasts out of their cages into others; and so on.
* * * * *
Before I had been a full day at my duties the procurator of the Beast- Barracks complimented me, declared that I was his very ideal of just the kind of man he had always needed and wanted, averred that I was already indispensable and vowed that he could not conceive how he or the Choragium had ever gotten on without me. Within a very few days he came to my quarters and said:
"I want you to be contented here. I won't listen to a word hinting at your leaving. Otherwise I'll do all I can to gratify every wish of yours not inconsistent with your continuing here and keeping up as you have begun. Of course, within a few days now, you'll have no such rush of all-day toil as you have been having. You have been doing in the past few days all the left-over jobs which should have been attended to since warm weather began. Once you get clear of legacies from the past you'll find a day's work can be done in much less than a day and will neither exhaust nor weary you. Now what can I do to make you as comfortable as possible?"
He had sat down and had motioned me to be seated also. I ruminated.