since
Murmex received his death-wound and broken only by whispers, deepened. The
amphitheater became almost still. Into the stillness the heralds
proclaimed that next day the funeral games of Murmex Lucro would be
celebrated in the Colosseum where he had died; that all persons entitled
to seats in the Colosseum were thereby enjoined to attend, unless too ill
to leave their homes: that all should come without togas, but, in sign of
mourning for Murmex, wearing over their garments full-length, all-
enveloping rain-cloaks of undyed black wool and similarly colored umbrella
hats; that any person failing to attend so habited would be severely
punished; that the show would be worth seeing, for, in honor of the Manes
of Murmex, to placate his ghost, no defeated fighter would be spared and
all the victors of the morning would fight each other in the afternoon.

Surely the tenth day before the Kalends of January, in December of the
nine hundred and forty-fourth year of the City, [Footnote: 191 A.D.] the
year in which Commodus was nominally consul for the seventh time, and
Pertinax consul for the second time, saw the strangest audience ever
assembled in the amphitheater of the Colosseum. I was there, seated, as on
the day before, next my master, my gaudy Asiatic garments, like his garb
of a noble of equestrian rank, hidden under a great raincoat and my face
shaded by the broad brim of an umbrella hat.

The universal material conventional for mourners' attire is certainly
appropriate and proper for mourning garb. For the undyed wool of black
sheep, when spun and woven, results in a cloth dingy in the extreme. The
wearing of garments made of it suits admirably with grief and gloom of
spirit, deepens sadness, accentuates woe, almost produces melancholy. And
the sight of it, when one is surrounded by persons so habited, conduces to
dejection and depression. This equally was felt by the whole audience.
Instead of being a space glaring in the sunlight shining on an expanse of
white togas, the hollow of the amphitheater was a dingy area of brownish
black under a lowering canopy of sullen cloud, for the sky was heavily
overcast and threatened rain all day, though not a drop fell. The windless
air was damp and penetratingly chilly, so that we almost shivered under
our swathings. The discomfort of not being warm enough and the dispiriting
effect of the grim sky and gloomy interior of the amphitheater was
manifest in a sort of general impre