ACCOMPANIED ON THE FLUTE.
A TALE OF ANCIENT ROME.
he Consul Duilius was entering Rome in triumph after his celebrated defeat of the Carthaginian fleet at Mylæ. He had won a great naval victory for his country with the first fleet that it had ever possessed—which was naturally a gratifying reflection, and he would have been perfectly happy now, if he had only been a little more comfortable.
But he was standing in an extremely rickety chariot, which was crammed with his nearer relations and a few old friends, to whom he had been obliged to send tickets. At his back stood a slave who held a heavy Etruscan crown on the Consul's head, and whenever he thought his master was growing conceited, threw in the reminder that he was only a man after all—a liberty which at any other time he might have had good reason to regret.
Then the large Delphic wreath, which Duilius wore as well as the crown, had slipped down over one eye and was tickling his nose, while—as both his hands were occupied, one with a sceptre, the other with a laurel bough, and he had to hold on tightly to the rail of the chariot whenever it jolted—there was nothing to do but suffer in silence.
They had insisted, too, upon painting him a beautiful bright red all over, and though it made him look quite new, and very shining and splendid, he had his doubts at times whether it was altogether becoming, and particularly, whether he would ever be able to get it off again.
But these were but trifles after all, and nothing compared with the honour and glory of it! Was not everybody straining to catch a glimpse of him? Did not even the spotted and skittish horses which drew the chariot repeatedly turn round to gaze upon his vermilioned features? As Duilius remarked this, he felt that he was, indeed, the central personage in all this magnificence, and that, on the whole, he liked it.
He could see the beaks of the ships he had captured, bobbing up and down in the middle distance; he could see the white bulls destined for sacrifice entering completely into the spirit of the thing, and redeeming the procession from any monotony by occasionally bolting down a back street, or tossing on their gilded horns some of the flamens who were walking solemnly in front of them.
He could hear, too, above five distinct brass bands, the remarks of his friends as they predicted rain, or expressed a pained surprise at the smallness of the crowd and the absence of any genuine enthusiasm; and he caught the general purport of the very offensive ribaldry circulated at his own expense among the brave legions that brought up the rear.