Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire

"I had to souse you," he explained. "I've been shaking you and yelling at you and you stayed as fast asleep as before I touched you. Get up and let's start for Rome."

Next morning, strangely enough, I wakened at my normal, habitual time for wakening when in town, and wakened feeling weak indeed and still sore in places, but entirely myself in...

I slept soundly all night but woke at the first appearance of light. I lay abed, my mind milling over my situation, over Vedia's unexpected jealousy of Marcia, over the absurdit...

Agathemer came in and explained that my tenants had a petition to present to me and had gathered, hoping that I would receive them after dinner. (Doubtless, I thought, conjectur...

Domiciled in the Choragium and busy there and in the Colosseum I spent almost a year. Until the approach of winter put a stop to spectacles in the arena and after the outset of...

Sight-seeing in Rome, in the guise of Gallic wastrels, under the tutelage of a harborside slum host, was truly an experience for me after my former station as a nobleman of the...

We had no bad weather on our voyage to Rome nor any adventure. The day before we sailed I had conned my image in the mirror in my dressing-room and had comforted myself with the...

After my seclusion at Baiae, up to the terrible events which I am about to narrate, by far the most important of my experiences had been my personal observations of the fights o...

Not many hours later, I, sleeping soundly in the straw, was wakened by the raising of the trap-door. Again a rope was let down. This time two of the Executioner's helpers slid d...

Some time before noon we were threading a barely visible track not far below the crest of the spur, a track bordered and overshadowed by chestnuts and beeches, but chestnuts and...

At Tibur I put up at a clean little inn I had known of since boyhood, but which I had never before entered or even seen, so that I felt safe there and reasonably sure to pass as...

Entedius it was, as I made sure, when he drew nearer, by his magnificent black mare. He covered the last hundred paces at a furious gallop, pulled up his snorting mare abruptly,...

I do not recall any special feat of the Imperial beast-killer during the summer and autumn of the year in which I had fooled Bulla and been transferred from the stud-farm to the...

Neither Agathemer nor I knew anything about bread-making. He tried, but merely wasted flour. And both of us hated the wearisome labor of grinding grain in either of the rough ha...

Maternus, whether from innate considerateness or because it happened to coincide with his plans, let us have our sleep out and wake naturally. We woke hungry and fed with the wh...

When I look back on the beginning of my adventures, I can set the very day and hour when the tranquil course of my early life came to an end, when the comfortable commonplaces o...

Customarily, while Palus flourished, each day began with beast-fights, the noon pause was filled in by exhibitions of athletes, acrobats, jugglers, trained animals and such like...

The late spring or early summer weather was hot and clear. We had been pressing on feverishly and were heated, tired and sleepy, when, while following a faint track through dens...

"Never!" said Tanno, "and he never spoke of it to me. I'm Spanish, you know, by ancestry, and Spaniards are not Syrians or Egyptians. Horoscopes don't figure largely in Spanish...

From early spring, however, all this normal traffic was interfered with, delayed, hindered and even totally blockaded by column after column of wains and wagons passing southwar...

We rode the first mile at full gallop and then slowed to an easy canter which permitted of conversation. All the way to Calcaria we discussed our situation, prospects and plans....

I was promptly haled off to the same prison where Galen had visited me three days before. There I was again deprived of my garments and clad in others, new, but of cheap materia...

From the marsh my path homewards led me past the villa, for it was directly between my cottage and the swamp. The very first human being I encountered was the _Villicus_ himself.

The liberations of public slaves from _ergastula_ in Turin, Milan, Placentia, Parma, Mutina, Bononia, Nuceria, Spolitum and Narnia resulted in the formation of eighteen tumultua...

Within a very few days after my encounter with Vedia at Bambilio's dinner Falco and I had just ascended the stair of his residence after returning from a conference with Pullani...

When our transports had abated a little I was aware that the twilight was deepening into dusk and that I must somehow save Vedia from the roaming wild beasts. I guided her along...

The murder or assassination or execution of Julianus on the Kalends of June shocked Falco even more than the deaths of Commodus and Pertinax. As the June days passed I had to ex...

When he was gone, when I had seen the postern door shut behind him, I felt suddenly weak and faint. I was amazed to find how exhausted I was left by the ebbing of the hot wave o...

After some days of rest, abundant food and leisurely hot-baths in the freedman's house, I left Nuceria under convoy of three genial road- constables and journeyed deliberately n...

Just how long I was entirely unconscious I do not know. For after I began to come to myself at intervals which grew shorter, for periods which grew longer, I was too weak to mov...

As the Gardens of Verus are north of the Tiber we had no difficulty whatever in casting a wide circuit to the left and coming out on the Aurelian Highway. All the way to it we h...

It was fully dark before we dared to leave our hiding-place and attempt the risky venture of essaying to reach a safer shelter or refuge in the forests without attracting the at...

Retrospectively, Cleander is talked of, if at all, chiefly as having been brutish, dull, stupid, venal, avaricious and cruel. Cruel and avaricious he certainly became; venal and...

As we left the Circus I heard in the crowd near us, along with fierce denunciations of the Crimsons and Golds, execrated by all the commonality as merely rich men's companies, t...

That day we met no one and made a long march north-westwards along the flank of the mountain, camping at dusk by a spring. There we rehearsed our rescue of Nona and marvelled at...

"I make it a point always to forget the names of the slaves I buy for cash without any guarantees and resell the same way. I have as bad a memory for names as any man alive and...

That evening, after our dinner, a perfect dinner eaten under a grape- arbor, lingering over the fruit and honey in the mingled light of waning dusk and a clear crescent moon, I...

Our promotion from the mills to the kitchen took place early in March of the year when Manius Acilius Glabrio, after an interval of thirty-four years since his first consulship,...

As on the days before, no one passed us and, indeed, as far as I could judge, no living thing came near us, except a hare or two. We kept close under our heap of leaves, inside...

Gloomy as is the upper cell of the Mamertine Prison there is light enough there for my eyes to have been utterly blinded by it as I was lowered into the black pit beneath. I saw...

By no means absurd, it seems to me, but altogether reasonable, is the impulse which urges me to write out a detailed narrative of my years of adversity and of the vicissitudes w...