evening before, noting, as a religious procession passed him, how
much noise a man and a boy could make, though not without a great deal
of real music, of which in truth the Romans were then as ever
passionately fond.

Hence the two friends took their way through the Via Flaminia, almost
along the line of the modern Corso, already bordered with handsome
villas, turning presently to the left, into the Field-of-Mars, still
the playground of Rome. But the vast public edifices were grown to be
almost continuous over the grassy expanse, represented now only by
occasional open spaces of verdure and wild-flowers. In one of these a
crowd was standing, to watch a party of athletes stripped for exercise.
Marius had been surprised at the luxurious variety of the litters borne
through Rome, where no carriage horses were allowed; and just then one
far more sumptuous than the rest, with dainty appointments of ivory and
gold, was carried by, all the town pressing with eagerness to get a
glimpse of its most beautiful woman, as she passed rapidly. Yes!
there, was the wonder of the world--the empress Faustina herself:
Marius could distinguish, could distinguish clearly, the well-known
profile, between the floating purple curtains.

For indeed all Rome was ready to burst into gaiety again, as it awaited
with much real [178] affection, hopeful and animated, the return of its
emperor, for whose ovation various adornments were preparing along the
streets through which the imperial procession would pass. He had left
Rome just twelve months before, amid immense gloom. The alarm of a
barbarian insurrection along the whole line of the Danube had happened
at the moment when Rome was panic-stricken by the great pestilence.

In fifty years of peace, broken only by that conflict in the East from
which Lucius Verus, among other curiosities, brought back the plague,
war had come to seem a merely romantic, superannuated incident of
bygone history. And now it was almost upon Italian soil. Terrible were
the reports of the numbers and audacity of the assailants. Aurelius,
as yet untried in war, and understood by a few only in the whole scope
of a really great character, was known to the majority of his subjects
as but a careful administrator, though a student of philosophy,
perhaps, as we say, a dilettante. But he was also the visible centre
of government, towards whom the hearts of a whole people turned,
grateful for fifty years of public happi