The time was now that of the Saturnalia, lasting seven days, beginning on the 17th December with a strange institution, a banquet of the gods. Usually the several gods had their feasts in their own temples and invited others to them, but on certain solemn occasions all banqueted together in public. The distress, the butcheries, the general confusion caused by the setting up and casting down of emperors—three in ten months—and now, eight months after, a fourth tottering; and every change involving massacre, plunder, disturbance of order;—this had moved the priests to decree a solemn lectisternium and supplication for the restoration of tranquillity and the cessation of civil broil.
The banquet was to take place in the forum.
“You shall come in the lectica (palanquin) with me,” said Duilia. “It will have quite a pathetic aspect—the widow and the orphan together. Besides, I want some one to talk to. What do you think of Flavius Domitianus? A modest lad, to my mind.”
“Shy and clumsy,” observed Domitia. “The sight of him is a horror to me.”
“My dear child, only a fool will take sprats when he can have whitebait. Look out to better yourself.”
“Oh, mother!—what is that?”
“A god going to supper,” said the lady. “We shall see plenty of them presently.”
That which had attracted her daughter’s attention was a bier supported on the shoulders of priests, on which lay a figure dressed handsomely, in the attitude of a man at table, raised on his left elbow that was buried in a pillow, the head erect and the right arm extended, balanced in the air. The body was probably of wood under the drooping drapery, but the face and hands and feet were of wax. In jolting over the pavement, the sleeve had become disarranged, and showed the wooden prop that sustained the waxen right hand. The face was colored, the eyes were of glass, and real hair was affixed to the head; the lower jaw, hung on wires, opened and shut with the jostling. The staring figure swaying on the shoulders of the bearers, had a sufficiently startling effect, sweeping round a corner, wagging its beard, and past the palanquin in which were the ladies.
“A thing like that can’t eat,” said Domitia.
“Oh, my dear child, no. The gods only sniff at the food. After it has been set before them, it is carried away, and the people scramble for it.”