or the Gate of Pomp, attended, each of them, by lictors having their fasces wreathed with laurel, came the Caesars.  First went Vespasian Caesar, the father.  He rode in a splendid golden chariot, to which were harnessed four white horses led by Libyan soldiers.  Behind him stood a slave clad in a dull robe, set there to avert the influence of the evil eye and of the envious gods, who held a crown above the head of the Imperator, and now and again whispered in his ear the ominous words, Respice post te, hominem memento te ("Look back at me and remember thy mortality.”)

After Vespasian Caesar, the father, came Titus Caesar, the son, but his chariot was of silver, and graved upon its front was a picture of the Holy House of the Jews melting in the flames.  Like his father he was attired in the toga picta and tunica palmata, the gold-embroidered over-robe and the tunic laced with silver leaves, while in his right hand he held a laurel bough, and in his left a sceptre.  He also was attended by a slave who whispered in his ear the message of mortality.

Next to the chariot of Titus, alongside of it indeed, and as little behind as custom would allow, rode Domitian, gloriously arrayed and mounted on a splendid steed.  Then came the tribunes and the knights on horseback, and after them the legionaries to the number of five thousand, every man of them having his spear wreathed in laurel.

Now the great procession was across the Tiber, and, following its appointed path down broad streets and past palaces and temples, drew slowly towards its object, the shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus, that stood at the head of the Sacred Way beyond the Forum.  Everywhere the side paths, the windows of houses, the great scaffoldings of timber, and the steps of temples were crowded with spectators.  Never before did Miriam understand how many people could inhabit a single city.  They passed them by thousands and by tens of thousands, and still, far as the eye could reach, stretched the white sea of faces.  Ahead that sea would be quiet, then, as the procession pierced it, it began to murmur.  Presently the murmur grew to a shout, the shout to a roar, and when the Caesars appeared in their glittering chariots, the roar to a triumphant peal which shook the street like thunder.  And so on for miles and miles, till Miriam’s eyes were dim with the glare and glitter, and her head swam at the ceaseless sound of shouting.

Often the procession would halt for a while, either because of a check to one of the pageants in front, or in order that some of its members might refresh themselves with drink which was brought to them.  Then the crowd, ceasing from its cheers, would make jokes, and criticise whatever person or thing they chanced to be near.  Greatly did they criticise Miriam in this fashion, or at the least she thought so, who must listen to it all.  Most of them, she found, knew her by her name of Pearl-Maiden, and