overtook him, the same his father had met. It was
mortal, of course, and the purple was Domitian's.

For a year and a day thereafter you would have thought Titus still at
the helm. There was the same clemency, the same regard for justice, the
same refinement and fastidiousness. The morose young poet had developed
into a model monarch. The old Neronians were perplexed, irritated too;
they had expected other things. Domitian was merely feeling the way;
the hand that held the sceptre was not quite sure of its strength, and,
tentatively almost, this Prince of Virtue began to scrutinize the
morals of Rome. For the first time he noticed that the cocottes took
their airing in litters. But litters were not for them! That abuse he
put a stop to at once. A senator manifested an interest in
ballet-girls; he was disgraced. The vestals, to whose indiscretions no
one had paid much attention, learned the statutes of an archaic law,
and were buried alive. The early distaste for blood was diminishing.
Domitian had the purple, but it was not bright enough; he wanted it
red, and what Domitian wanted he got. Your god and master orders it,
was the formula he began to use when addressing the Senate and People
of Rome.

To that the people were indifferent. The spectacles he gave in the
Flavian amphitheatre were too magnificently atrocious not to be a
compensation in full for any eccentricity in which he might indulge.
Besides, under Nero, Claud, Caligula, on en avait vu bien d'autres. And
at those spectacles where he presided, crowned with a tiara, on which
were the images of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, while grouped about him
the college of Flavian flamens wore tiaras that differed therefrom
merely in this, that they bore his image too, the people right royally
applauded their master and their god.

And it was just as well they did; Domitian was quite capable of
ordering everybody into the arena. As yet, however, he had appeared
little different from any other prince. That Rome might understand that
there was a difference, and also in what that difference consisted, he
gave a supper. Everyone worth knowing was bidden, and, as is usual in
state functions, everyone that was bidden came. The supper hall was
draped with black; the ceiling, the walls, the floor, everything was
basaltic. The couches were black, the linen was black, the slaves were
black. Behind each guest was a broken column with his name on it. The
food was such as is prepared