described it, out of slight materials, but richly and elegantly
decorated, in order to provide a feast for the eyes of the Alexandrians,
with the intention of riding in it himself, with his wife and the most
illustrious of the Romans who formed the Empress' suite, to enjoy all the
Holiday doings in the chief streets of the city. Young and old, great
and small, men and women, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Egyptians, foreigners
dark and fair, with smooth hair or crisp wool, crowded with equal
eagerness to the edge of the roadway to see the gorgeous boat.

Hadrian, far more anxious to see the show than his younger but less
excitable favorite, pushed into the front rank, and as Antinous was
trying to follow him, a Greek boy, whom he had shoved aside, snatched his
mask from his face, threw himself on the ground, and slipped nimbly off
with his booty. When Hadrian looked round for the Bithyman, the ship-in
which the prefect was standing between the images of the Emperor and
Empress, while Julia, Balbilla, and her companion, and other Roman lords
and ladies were sitting in it--had come quite near to them. His sharp
eye had recognized them all, and fearing that the lad's uncovered face
would betray them he cried out:

"Turn round and get into the crowd again." The favorite immediately
obeyed, and only too glad to escape from the crowd, which was a thing he
detested, he sat down on a bench close to the Paneum, and looked dreamily
at the ground while he thought of Selene and the nosegay he had sent her,
neither seeing nor hearing anything of what was going on around him.

When the gaudy ship left the gardens of the Paneum and turned into the
Canopic way, the crowd pursued it in a dense mass, hallooing and
shouting. Like a torrent suddenly swelled by a storm it rushed on,
surging and growing at each moment, and carrying with it even those who