ore
the law, whom any franchised citizen would rate as socially far beneath
himself. To have identified the emperor with Paulus in a voice above a
whisper would have made the culprit liable to death and confiscation of
his goods.

The substitute himself, a man of mystery, was kept in virtual
imprisonment. He was known as "Pavonius Nasor," not because that was
his real name, which was known to very few people, but because of an old
legend that the ghost of a certain Pavonius Nasor, murdered centuries
ago and never buried, still walked in the neighborhood of that part of
the palace where the emperor's substitute now led his mysterious, secret
existence.

There were plenty of whispered stories current as to his true identity.
Some said he was an impoverished landholder whom Commodus had met by
accident when traveling in Northern Italy. But it was much more commonly
believed he was the emperor's twin brother, spirited away at birth by
midwives, and the stories told to account for that were as remarkably
unlikely as the tale itself; as for instance, that a soothsayer had
prophesied how Commodus should one day mount the throne and that he and
his twin brother would wreck Rome in civil war--a warning hardly likely
to have had much weight with the father, Marcus Aurelius, although the
mother was more likely to have given credence to it.

Whatever the truth of his origin, Pavonius Nasor never ran the risk of
telling it. He kept his sinecure by mastering his tongue, preserving
almost bovine speechlessness. When he and Commodus met face to face he
never seemed to see the joke of the resemblance, never laughed at
Commodus' obscenely vivid jibes at his expense, nor once complained of
his anomalous position. He appeared to be a man of no ambition other
than to get through life as easily as might be--of no personal dignity,
no ruling habits, but possessed of imitative talent that enabled him,
without the slightest trouble, to adopt the very gait and gesture of the
emperor whom he impersonated.

As he strode ahead along the tunnel he received the guards' salute with
merely enough nod of recognition to deceive an onlooker not in the
secret. (It was Pavonius Nasor's half-indulgent, rather lazy smile that
had persuaded Rome and even the praetorian guards that Commodus was an
easy-going, sensual, good humored man.)

There was a box at one end of the private arena, over the gate where the
horses entered, so placed as to avoid