nset just before our last night's halt out of the city, from a
hilltop on the highway, I had a glorious view of Rome bathed in mellow
evening sunlight, much as I had viewed it when I came down the same
highroad with the mutineers from Britain. As always this unsurpassable
sight filled me with intense emotions.

We entered Rome, of course, by the Flaminian Gate and at dawn. Before
sunrise I was in the great mass of buildings variously known as the
Choragium, the Therotheca, the Animal Mansions and the Beast-Barracks.
These were mostly of many stories, the ground-level used for the beasts,
the second floor for their keepers and attendants, the cage-cleaners, the
overseers, and the rest of the army of men who cared for the animals, and
the upper floors utilized as store-rooms for all sorts of weapons, armor,
costumes, implements and apparatus used in and for the spectacles; swords,
spears, arrows, shields, helmets, breast-plates, corselets, kilts,
greaves, boots, cloaks, tunics, poles, rope, pulleys, winches, jack-
screws, derricks, wagons, carts, and the like.

The jumble of buildings was without any sort of general plan. Apparently a
courtyard and the structures about it had been found necessary for housing
the beasts and their attendants and had been bought by the management of
the Colosseum. When it was overtaxed, as the number of animals exhibited
increased, an adjacent property had been acquired and annexed. So the
Choragium had been created and extended till it now covered many acres and
had many courtyards, all arcaded on all sides. Under the arcades were set
as many cages as they could accommodate; when the beasts were too numerous
for their cages to be all under the arcades some were stood out in the
courtyards.

I was comfortably housed in light, airy, roomy, clean and well-furnished
quarters on one of the biggest courtyards. From dawn after my first
night's sleep there I was busy quelling vicious beasts so their cages
could be cleaned; keeping others quiet while the beast-surgeons dressed
wounds inflicted by their captors or keepers or sores caused by their
confinement; inducing others to swallow the remedies the animal-doctors
thought good for them; leading beasts out of their cages into others; and
so on.

* * * * *

Before I had been a full day at my duties the procurator of the Beast-
Barracks complimented me, declared that I was his very ideal of just the
kind of man he