this Titianus had caused to be represented just as the Homeric
hymns described it, out of slight materials, but richly and elegantly
decorated, in order to provide a feast for the eyes of the Alexandrians,
with the intention of riding in it himself, with his wife and the most
illustrious of the Romans who formed the Empress' suite, to enjoy all
the Holiday doings in the chief streets of the city. Young and old,
great and small, men and women, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Egyptians,
foreigners dark and fair, with smooth hair or crisp wool, crowded with
equal eagerness to the edge of the roadway to see the gorgeous boat.

Hadrian, far more anxious to see the show than his younger but less
excitable favorite, pushed into the front rank, and as Antinous was
trying to follow him, a Greek boy, whom he had shoved aside, snatched
his mask from his face, threw himself on the ground, and slipped nimbly
off with his booty. When Hadrian looked round for the Bithyman, the
ship-in which the prefect was standing between the images of the Emperor
and Empress, while Julia, Balbilla, and her companion, and other Roman
lords and ladies were sitting in it--had come quite near to them. His
sharp eye had recognized them all, and fearing that the lad's uncovered
face would betray them he cried out:

"Turn round and get into the crowd again." The favorite immediately
obeyed, and only too glad to escape from the crowd, which was a thing
he detested, he sat down on a bench close to the Paneum, and looked
dreamily at the ground while he thought of Selene and the nosegay he
had sent her, neither seeing nor hearing anything of what was going on
around him.

When the gaudy ship left the gardens of the Paneum and turned into
the Canopic way, the crowd pursued it in a dense mass, hallooing and
shouting. Like a torrent suddenly swelled by a storm it rushed on,
surging and growing at each moment, and carrying with it even those who
tried to resist its force. Thus even Hadrian and Pollux were forced to
follow in its wake, and it was not till they found themselves in the
broad Canopic way that they were able to come to a stand-still. The
broad roadway of this famous street was bordered on each side by a long
vista of colonnade, and it extended from one end of the city to the
other. There were hundreds of the Corinthian columns which supported the
roof that covered the footway, and near to one of these the Emperor and
Pollux succeeded at last in effecting a ha