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Caesar Dies by Talbot Mundy
page 121 of 185 (65%)
coming close enough to detect the fraud, materially helped to strengthen
the officially fostered argument that Commodus could not be Paulus.

So the mystery of the identity of Paulus was like all court secrets and
most secrets of intriguing governments, no mystery at all to hundreds,
but to thousands an insoluble conundrum. The official propagandists of
the court news, absolutely in control of all the channels through which
facts could reach the public, easily offset the constant leakage from
the lips of slaves and gladiators by disseminating artfully concocted
news. Those actually in the secret, flattered by the confidence and
fearful for their own skins, steadfastly denied the story when it
cropped up. Last, but not least, was the law, that made it sacrilege to
speak in terms derogatory to the emperor. A gladiator, though the crowd
might almost deify him, was a casteless individual, unprivileged before
the law, whom any franchised citizen would rate as socially far beneath
himself. To have identified the emperor with Paulus in a voice above a
whisper would have made the culprit liable to death and confiscation of
his goods.

The substitute himself, a man of mystery, was kept in virtual
imprisonment. He was known as "Pavonius Nasor," not because that was
his real name, which was known to very few people, but because of an old
legend that the ghost of a certain Pavonius Nasor, murdered centuries
ago and never buried, still walked in the neighborhood of that part of
the palace where the emperor's substitute now led his mysterious, secret
existence.

There were plenty of whispered stories current as to his true identity.
Some said he was an impoverished landholder whom Commodus had met by
accident when traveling in Northern Italy. But it was much more commonly
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