all the
theatres in the town. Before the Emperor and his escort could reach
the Paneum itself the crowd suddenly packed more closely and began
exclaiming among themselves, "Here they come!" "They are early to-day!"
"Here they are!"

Lictors with their fasces over their shoulders were clearing the broad
roadway, which led from the prefect's on the Bruchiom to the Paneum,
with their staves and paying no heed to the mocking and witty speeches
addressed to them by the mob wherever they appeared. One woman, as she
was driven back by a Roman guardian of the peace, cried scornfully,
"Give me your rods for my children and do not use them on unoffending
citizens."

"There is an axe hidden among the faggots," added an Egyptian
letter-writer in a warning voice.

"Bring it here," cried a butcher. "I can use it to slaughter my beasts."
The Romans as they heard these bandied words felt the blood mounting
to their faces, but the prefect, who knew his Alexandrians well, had
counselled them to be deaf; to see everything but to hear nothing. Now
there appeared a cohort of the Twelfth Legion, who were quartered in
garrison in Egypt, in their richest arms and holiday uniforms. Behind
them came two files of particularly tall lictors wearing wreaths,
and they were followed by several hundred wild beasts, leopards
and panthers, giraffes, gazelles, antelopes, and deer, all led by
dark-colored Egyptians. Then came a richly-dressed and much be-wreathed
Dionysian chorus with the sound of tambourines and lyres, double flutes
and triangles, and finally, drawn by ten elephants and twenty white
horses, a large ship, resting on wheels and gilt from stem to stern,
representing the vessel in which the Tyrrhenian pirates were said to
have carried off the young Dionysus when they had seen the black-haired
hero on the shore in his purple garments. But the miscreants--so the
myth went on to say--were not allowed long to rejoice in their violence,
for hardly had the ship reached the open sea when the fetters dropped
from the god, vines entwined the sails in sudden luxuriance, tendrils
encumbered the oars and rudder, heavy grapes clustered round the ropes,
and ivy clung to the mast and shrouded the seats and sides of the
vessel. Dionysus is equally powerful on sea and on land; in the pirates'
ship he assumed the form of a lion, and the pirates, filled with terror,
flung themselves into the sea, and in the form of dolphins followed
their lost bark.

All