you and I are never to meet again unless by some unimaginable
series of miracles."

And he gave me four silver pieces, saying:

"This will keep you in food for a long time, if you are sparing. Good
luck!"

Then, habited as in the morning, we sallied out, and ate at a cook-shop we
had never before entered, which was full of revellers dressed as votaries
of Isis, as Egyptians, as cut-laws, as Arabians, as anything and
everything. And as we crossed the city on our way to the Aelian Bridge,
as we were passing through a better part of it, I was struck with the
craziness of the costumes, many imitating every imaginable style of garb:
Gallic, Spanish, Moorish, Syrian, Persian, Lydian, Thracian, Scythian and
many more; but many also devised according to no style that ever existed,
but invented by the wearers, in a mad competition to don the most
fantastic and bizarre garb imagination could suggest.

In the torchlit gardens I perceived at once that it would be very easy for
Maternus to edge close to the actual bodyguard, mingle with them, pass
himself off as one, get near the Emperor and make a rush at him. He had
chosen a spot where the procession was to circle thrice about a great
statue of Cybele set up for that occasion on a temporary base in the
middle of a round grass-plot. His idea was that I was to point out
Commodus to him on the first round and he to consider the disposition of
the participants in the procession and make his attempt on the second or
third round.

Standing, as we did, in the front row of a mass of revellers packed as
spectators along the incurved outer rim of the ring, we had a surpassingly
good view of the procession as it entered the circle. There were various
bands of votaries and then six eunuch priests, their faces whitened with
flour, their garb a flowing robe of light vivid yellow, convoying a brace
of panthers, pacing as sedately as the brace of lions in the morning
procession, drawing a light chariot in which sat a diademed, robed and
garlanded image of Cybele, very gaudy and garish. Behind the chariot paced
two priests of Cybele, not Phrygian Eunuchs, but Roman officials, in their
pontifical robes, a pair of dignified old senators, ex-consuls both,
Vitrasius Pollio and Flavius Aper, full of self-importance. Then came the
Chief Priest, tall, full-bearded, swarthy, his robes a blaze of gold and
jewels, pacing solemnly, on either side of him, as assistant priest, a
young Roman nobleman, cho