es, of costumes, habits, faces, languages--of gorgeousness and
squalor--license, privilege and rigid formalism--extravagance--and of
innumerable gods.

There was nobility and love of virtue, cheek by jowl with beastliness,
nor was it always easy to discover which was which; but the birds sang
blithely in the cages in the portico, where the long seat was on which
philosophers discoursed to any one who cared to listen. The baths that
the Emperor Titus built were the supreme, last touch of all. From
furnaces below-ground, where the whipped slaves sweated in the dark, to
domed roof where the doves changed hue amid the gleam of gold and
colored glass, they typified Rome, as the city herself was of the
essence of the world.

The approach to the Thermae of Titus was blocked by litters, some heavy
enough to be borne by eight matched slaves and large enough for company.
Women oftener than men shared litters with friends; then the troupe of
attendants was doubled; slaves were in droves, flocks, hordes around
the building, making a motley sight of it in their liveries, which were
adaptations of the every-day costumes of almost all the countries of the
known world.

Under the entrance portico, between the double row of marble columns,
sat a throng of fortune-tellers of both sexes, privileged because the
aedile of that year had superstitious leanings, but as likely as not to
be driven away, and even whipped, when the next man should succeed to
office. In and out among the crowd ran tipsters, touts for gambling
dens and sellers of charms; most of them found ready customers among
the slaves, who had nothing to do but wait, and stare, and yawn until
their masters came out from the baths. They were raw, inexperienced
slaves who had not a coin or two to spend.

Within the entrance of the Thermae was a marble court, where better
known philosophers discoursed on topics of the day, each to his own
group of admirers. A Christian, dressed like any other Roman, held one
corner with a crowd around him. There was a tremendous undercurrent of
reaction against the prevalent cynical materialism and the vortex of
fashion was also the cauldron of new aspirations and the battle-ground
of wits.

Beyond the inner entrance were the two disrobing rooms--women to the
left, men to the right where slaves, whose insolence had grown into a
cultivated art, exchanged the folded garments for a bracelet with a
number. Thence, stark-naked, through th