less continuous
and less burdensome. Soon afterwards I settled into a sort of daily
routine which occupied me, but did not wear me out and which often left me
not a little free time.

I found that I was entirely free to go and come as I pleased, when not
occupied. I did go to the Temple of Mercury and offer two white hens
bought in the Forum Boarium, as I had done when in the City with Maternus.
Otherwise I kept pretty close for more than a month. I feared to be
recognized as myself by some secret-service agent; I feared almost as much
to be identified as Felix the Horse-Tamer by some henchman of the King of
the Highwaymen. I wanted to try to communicate with Vedia, but the more I
pondered on how to do so the more I saw only betrayal, recognition and
death as the probable results of every plan I devised.

CHAPTER XXX

FESTUS

Domiciled in the Choragium and busy there and in the Colosseum I spent
almost a year. Until the approach of winter put a stop to spectacles in
the arena and after the outset of spring permitted their resumption, I was
not only continuously busy, but entirely contented. Of the dreary and
tedious winter between, which was intensely dispiriting and appeared
interminable, the less I say the better. I do not want to remind myself of
it.

I was of course free from the bodily miseries which had made my winters at
Placentia and Nuceria so terrible: I did not suffer from cold, hunger,
vermin, sleeplessness, overwork, exhaustion, weakness, blows and abuse. I
was, on the contrary, comfortably lodged and clothed, well attended,
lavishly and excellently fed and humored by the procurator.

But at Placentia and Nuceria I had solaced myself amid the horror of my
situation by reminding myself that I was, at least, alive, and, as long as
I was in an _ergastulum_, entirely safe from any danger of being
recognized and executed. Here, in Rome, often in the arena, under the eyes
of sixty thousand Romans, thousands of whom had known me in my prosperity
and hundreds of whom had known me familiarly from my childhood, I was,
every instant, in peril of recognition and of betrayal to the secret
service. While I was actually in the arena I was so busy or so exhilarated
by my participation in the most magnificent spectacle on earth that I
never worried a moment. I seldom worried while I was occupied with any of
my duties in the Colosseum or Choragium, although I knew I was very liable
to recognition, for the pass