Thus soliloquising, Clodius arrived in the Via Domitiana, which was
crowded with passengers and chariots, and exhibited all that gay and
animated exuberance of life and motion which we find at this day in the
streets of Naples.

The bells of the cars as they rapidly glided by each other jingled
merrily on the ear, and Clodius with smiles or nods claimed familiar
acquaintance with whatever equipage was most elegant or fantastic: in
fact, no idler was better known in Pompeii.

'What, Clodius! and how have you slept on your good fortune?' cried, in
a pleasant and musical voice, a young man, in a chariot of the most
fastidious and graceful fashion. Upon its surface of bronze were
elaborately wrought, in the still exquisite workmanship of Greece,
reliefs of the Olympian games; the two horses that drew the car were of
the rarest breed of Parthia; their slender limbs seemed to disdain the
ground and court the air, and yet at the slightest touch of the
charioteer, who stood behind the young owner of the equipage, they
paused motionless, as if suddenly transformed into stone--lifeless, but
lifelike, as one of the breathing wonders of Praxiteles. The owner
himself was of that slender and beautiful symmetry from which the
sculptors of Athens drew their models; his Grecian origin betrayed
itself in his light but clustering locks, and the perfect harmony of his
features. He wore no toga, which in the time of the emperors had indeed
ceased to be the general distinction of the Romans, and was especially
ridiculed by the pretenders to fashion; but his tunic glowed in the
richest hues of the Tyrian dye, and the fibulae, or buckles, by which it
was fastened, sparkled with emeralds: around his neck was a chain of
gold, which in the middle of his breast twisted itself into the form of
a serpent's head, from the mouth of which hung pendent a large signet