crowding; horribly uncomfortable in the heavy togas that court
etiquette prescribed, reminded of their dignity by colossal statues of
the noblest Romans of antiquity, and ushered by magnificently uniformed
past masters of the art of ceremony, all who entered felt that they were
insignificant intruders into a golden mystery. The palace prefect in
his cloak of cloth of gold, with his ivory wand of office, seemed a high
priest of eternity; subprefects, standing in the marble antechamber to
examine visitors' credentials and see that none passed in improperly
attired, were keepers of Olympus.

The gilded marble throne was on a dais approached by marble steps,
beneath a balcony to which a stair ascended from behind a carved screen.
Trumpets announced the approach of Caesar, who could enter unobserved
through a door at the side of the dais. From the moment that the trumpet
sounded, and the guards grew as rigid as the basalt statues in the
niches of the columned walls, it was a punishable crime to speak or even
to move until Caesar appeared and was seated.

Nor was Caesar himself an anticlimax. Even Nero, nerveless in his
latter days, when self-will and debauchery had pouched his eyes and
stomach, had possessed the Roman gift of standing like a god. Vespasian
and Titus, each in turn, was Mars personified. Aurelius had typified a
gentler phase of Rome, a subtler dignity, but even he, whose worst
severity was tempered by the philosophical regret that he could not kill
crime with kindliness, had worn the imperial purple like Olympus'
delegate.

Commodus, in the minutes that he spared from his amusements to accept
the glamor of the throne, was perfect. Handsomest of all the Caesars,
he could act his part with such consummate majesty that men who knew him