tents set up for us, presumably for the commanders'
aides. In front of the Praetorium, between it and the square, was a wide,
broad and high platform of new brickwork, paved on top, railed with solid,
low, carved railings set in short carved oak posts. The corner posts, and
two others dividing the front and back of the platform equally, were tall
and supported an awning of striped canvas like that of the commander's
tent.

Goggling with curiosity we, as we deployed to our quarters, stared hard at
the magnificent tent and sumptuous platform with its gorgeous awning. Once
at our quarters, I and Agathemer, of course, must cook and serve food to
our century. Only after all were fed did we, in common with all the middle
and rear of our road-column, learn what had occurred.

While we ate, our sergeants, while they also ate somehow, held a
centurions' council, at which those of the fifty-four who had not been far
enough forward on the Highway to see and hear were informed, by those who
had, of what had happened. When our sergeant returned from this council he
told us, in a jumbled and mumbled attempt at an address.

From what he told me and from what I heard later I gather that, as the
column debouched from the bridge, its head was met and checked by a body
of mounted Praetorian Guards. Their tribune, in the name of the Emperor,
ordered the column to halt and bade its centurions deploy their men right
and left and mass them in a largish space free of big tombs. As they
deployed the Praetorians also deployed to left and right of the Highway
and the foremost mutineers descried on the roadway the splendid horses and
gorgeous trappings of the Emperor's personal staff, among whom, from the
statues, busts and painted panel-portraits of him which they had seen
daily in their own quarters and countless times on their road to Rome, the
more alert of them recognized their liege.

Then rose that unexpected wave of cheering which had first apprized us in
the rear that something unusual was toward. Commodus, as I heard from
Publius Cordatus himself, after our nap and before the Emperor's return,
was mounted on a tall sorrel such as his father had always preferred on
his frontier campaigns. Also he was garbed not only as his father had
habitually been when on frontier expeditions, but seemingly, in one of his
old outfits. For not only Cordatus, but a dozen more, declared that his
helmet, corselet and the plates of his kilt-straps, were o