CHAPTER I

AN UNEXPECTED GUEST


When I look back on the beginning of my adventures, I can set the very day
and hour when the tranquil course of my early life came to an end, when
the comfortable commonplaces of my previous existence altered, when the
placid current of my former life broke suddenly and without warning into
the tumultuous rapids which hurried me from surprise to surprise and from
peril to peril. The last hour of my serene youth was about the ninth of
the day, nearly midafternoon, on the Nones of June in the 937th year of
the city, [Footnote: A.D. 184. See Note C.] while Cossonius Marullus and
Papirius Aelian were consuls, when Commodus had already been four years
Emperor.

It was not that misfortune then suddenly overwhelmed me, not that, sharp
as a blown trumpet, I heard the voice of doom blare over me; not that, as
one sees the upper rim of the sun vanish beneath the waves where the
skyline meets the sea, and knows day ended and night begun, not thus that
I recognized the end of my prosperity and the beginning of my disasters.
That moment came later, as I shall record. It was rather that; as, in
certain states of the weather, long before sunset one may be suddenly
aware that afternoon is past and evening approaches; so, though I had no
intimation at the moment, yet, reviewing my memories I realize that at
that instant began the chain of trivial circumstances which led up to my
calamity and enmeshed me in ruin.