fruit, wine, or water mixed with fig-juice; of tricksters; of venders of
marvellous medicines; of soothsayers; of discoverers of hidden
treasures; of interpreters of dreams. Here and there, in the tumult of
conversations and cries, were mingled sounds of the Egyptian sistra, of
the sambuké, or of Grecian flutes. Here and there the sick, the pious,
or the afflicted were bearing offerings to the temples. In the midst of
the people, on the stone flags, gathered flocks of doves, eager for the
grain given them, and like movable many-colored and dark spots, now
rising for a moment with a loud sound of wings, now dropping down again
to places left vacant by people. From time to time the crowds opened
before litters in which were visible the affected faces of women, or the
heads of senators and knights, with features, as it were, rigid and
exhausted from living. The many-tongued population repeated aloud their
names, with the addition of some term of praise or ridicule. Among the
unordered groups pushed from time to time, advancing with measured
tread, parties of soldiers, or watchers, preserving order on the
streets. Around about, the Greek language was heard as often as Latin.

Vinicius, who had not been in the city for a long time, looked with a
certain curiosity on that swarm of people and on that Forum Romanum,
which both dominated the sea of the world and was flooded by it, so that
Petronius, who divined the thoughts of his companion, called it "the
nest of the Quirites--without the Quirites." In truth, the local
element was well-nigh lost in that crowd, composed of all races and
nations. There appeared Ethiopians, gigantic light-haired people from
the distant north, Britons, Gauls, Germans, sloping-eyed dwellers of
Lericum; people from the Euphrates and from the Indus, with beards dyed
brick color; Syrians from the banks of the Orontes, with black and mild
eyes; dwellers in the deserts of Arabia, dried up as a bone; Jews, with
their flat breasts; Egyptians, with the eternal, indifferent smile on