e indolent Petronius, greeted kindly by the multitude, had given
command to bear him and his godlike slave in a litter. Tigellinus went
in a chariot drawn by ponies ornamented with white and purple feathers,
They saw him as he rose in the chariot repeatedly, and stretched his
neck to see if Caesar was preparing to give him the sign to go his
chariot. Among others the crowd greeted Licinianus with applause,
Vitelius with laughter, Vatinius with hissing. Towards Licinus and
Lecanius the consuls they were indifferent, but Tullius Senecio they
loved, it was unknown why, and Vestinius received applause.

The court was innumerable. It seemed that all that was richest, most
brilliant and noted in Rome, was migrating to Antium. Nero never
travelled otherwise than with thousands of vehicles; the society which
accompanied him almost always exceeded the number of soldiers in a
legion. [In the time of the Caesars a legion was always 12,000 men.]
Hence Domitius Afer appeared, and the decrepit Lucius Saturninus; and
Vespasian, who had not gone yet on his expedition to Judea, from which
he returned for the crown of Caesar, and his sons, and young Nerva,
and Lucan, and Annius Gallo, and Quintianus, and a multitude of women
renowned for wealth, beauty, luxury, and vice.

The eyes of the multitude were turned to the harness, the chariots, the
horses, the strange livery of the servants, made up of all peoples of
the earth. In that procession of pride and grandeur one hardly knew
what to look at; and not only the eye, but the mind, was dazzled by
such gleaming of gold, purple, and violet, by the flashing of precious
stones, the glitter of brocade, pearls, and ivory. It seemed that the
very rays of the sun were dissolving in that abyss of brilliancy. And
though wretched people were not lacking in that throng, people with
sunken stomachs, and with hunger in their eyes, that spectacle inflamed
not only their desire of enjoyment and their envy, but filled them
with delight and pride, because it gave a feeling of the might and
invincibility of Rome, to which the world contributed, and before which
the world knelt. Indeed there was not on earth any one who ventured to
think that that power would not endure through all ages, and outlive all
nations, or that there was anything in existence that had strength to
oppose it.

Vinicius, riding at the end of the retinue, sprang out of his chariot
at sight of the Apostle and Lygia, whom he had not expe