hold conference with various
patricians in regard to private affairs, to which he attended with great
scrupulousness, said farewell to the Greek.

On being left alone Actaeon realized that he was hungry. It would be some
time before the Senate would assemble, and wearied of the noisy stir in
the Forum he passed on, walking around the base of the Capitoline,
following a street broader than the others, lined with stone buildings,
which displayed through their open doors the relative abundance of
patrician families.

He entered a bakery and rapped on the stone of the deserted counter with
an _as_. A plaintive voice answered from a kind of cavern. The Greek
peered into the gloomy grotto and saw a mill for grinding wheat, and
yoked to it a man, who was turning it with great effort.

The slave came out almost naked, wiping off the sweat which was
streaming down his forehead, and taking the money offered by the Greek
handed him a round loaf. Then he stood looking Actaeon over with
curiosity.

"Do you own the bakery?" Actaeon asked.

"I am nothing but a slave," he replied sadly. "My master had to go to
the Forum to see the dealers in wheat. You are a Greek, are you not?"

Before Actaeon deigned to answer, he hastened to add with melancholy
pride:

"I have not always been a slave. I have been in this condition but a
short time, and before I lost my freedom my fervent desire was to visit
your country. O Athens! The city where poets are gods!"

He recited in Greek some verses from the Prometheus of AEschylus,
astonishing Actaeon by the purity of his accent and by the expression
which he communicated to his words.

"Can it be that here in Rome your masters dedicate you to poesy?" asked
the Athenian, laughing.

"I was a poet before I became a slave. My name is Plautus."

Glancing around as if fearing to be surprised by some member of his
master's family he continued talking, happy at being able to free
himself from the torment of the mill.

"I have written comedies. I tried to establish the theatre in Rome,
which is almost a cult among your people. The Romans have little
sensibility to poetry. They love farces; a tragedy that would move the
Hellenes to tears, leaves them cold; one of Aristophanes' comedies would
put them to sleep. They, Athenian, enjoy only the Etruscan buffoons,
those grotesque comedians of the farces which they call Atellanae, and
the hideous maskers with sharp teeth and deformed heads who stalk in