o had glanced
into Nemestronia's garden and seen me with Egnatius Capito.

After we left the Temple of Hercules I expected him to conduct me back to
our lodgings for the day. He never suggested it, but kept me with him,
strolling about the central parts of the city as if he had nothing to
fear, walking all round the Colosseum and loitering through the Vicus
Cyprius, frankly amused at the sights we saw there.

He had no difficulty in finding shops of costumers: on the eve of the
Festival they displayed placards calling attention to their wares. The
first we entered had no Praetorian uniforms; but, as if the request for
them were a matter of course, its proprietor directed us to the shop of a
cousin of his who made a specialty of them. There I was amazed that such
laxity of law, or of enforcement of law, could possibly exist as would
permit such a trade. There was evidently a regular manufacture for this
festival of costumes simulating and travestying those of the Imperial Body
Guard. We were shown scores of them and the shop had them in a great pile.

The tunics were genuine tunics formerly worn by the actual Praetorian
Guards but discarded and sold as worn or faded. There were also many such
kilts and corselets and helmets. But as helmets, corselets and even kilts
wore out or lost their freshness more slowly than tunics, there were many
imitation kilts and corselets of sheepskin painted, and many cheap, light
helmets of willow-wood, covered with dogskin. But all these had genuine
plumes, as cast-off plumes were even more plentiful than second-hand
tunics.

As there was a strict enforcement of the law forbidding the sale,
transport, storage or possession of the weapons of any part of the
military establishment the shields and swords which went with the costumes
were all imitations; flimsy, but astonishingly deceiving to the eye, even
at a short distance. The shields were of sheep-skin stretched over an
osier frame, but painted outside so as to present the appearance of the
genuine Praetorian shields. The baldricks and belts were also of sheep-
skin, the scabbards of willow-wood, and the blades of the wooden swords of
fig-wood, so as to be completely harmless.

When Maternus proposed to hire twenty-one of these suits the proprietor
took it as a customary transaction, inspected and counted twenty-one
costumes and stated the charge for hiring them until the day after the
Festival. But he also stated that he did not hire