rs and strollers, for the Romans were so early-rising a
people that many a Patrician preferred to see his clients at six in the
morning. Such was the good republican tradition, still upheld by the
more conservative; but with more modern habits of luxury, a night of
pleasure and banqueting was no uncommon thing. Thus one, who had learned
the new and yet adhered to the old, might find his hours overlap, and
without so much as a pretence of sleep come straight from his night of
debauch into his day of business, turning with heavy wits and an aching
head to that round of formal duties which consumed the life of a Roman
gentleman.

So it was with Emilius Flaccus that March morning. He and his fellow
senator, Caius Balbus, had passed the night in one of those gloomy
drinking bouts to which the Emperor Domitian summoned his chosen friends
at the high palace on the Palatine. Now, having reached the portals of
the house of Flaccus, they stood together under the pomegranate-fringed
portico which fronted the peristyle and, confident in each other's tried
discretion, made up by the freedom of their criticism for the long
self-suppression of that melancholy feast.

"If he would but feed his guests," said Balbus, a little red-faced,
choleric nobleman with yellow-shot angry eyes. "What had we? Upon my
life, I have forgotten. Plovers' eggs, a mess of fish, some bird or
other, and then his eternal apples."

"Of which," said Flaccus, "he ate only the apples. Do him the justice to
confess that he takes even less than he gives. At least they cannot say
of him as of Vitellius, that his teeth beggared the empire."

"No, nor his thirst either, great as it is. That fiery Sabine wine of
his could be had for a few sesterces the amphora. It is the common drink
of the carters at every wine-house on the country roads. I longed for a
glass of my own rich Falernian or the mellow Coan that was bottled in
the year that Titus took Jerusalem. Is it even now too late? Could we
not wash this rasping stuff from our palates?"

"Nay, better come in with me now and take a bitter draught ere you go
upon your way. My Greek physician Stephanos has a rare prescription for
a morning head. What! Your clients await you? Well, I will see you later
at the Senate house."

The Patrician had entered his atrium, bright with rare flowers, and
melodious with strange singing birds. At the jaws of the hall, true to
his morning duties, stood Lebs, the little Nubian slave,