sited the Empress, in the hope of persuading
her to look on at the gay doings of the people, even if incognito; but
Sabina was out of spirits, declared herself unwell, and was quite sure
that the noise of the rabble would be the death of her. Having, as she
said, so vivacious a reporter as Verus, she might spare herself from
exposing her own person to the dust and smell of the town, and the uproar
of men. As soon as Lucilla begged her husband to remember his rank and
not to mingle with the excited multitude, at any rate after dark, the
Empress strictly enjoined him to see with his own eyes everything that
could be worth notice in the festival, and more particularly to give
attention to everything that was peculiar to Alexandria and not to be
seen in Rome.

After sunset Verus had first gone to visit the veterans of the Twelfth
Legion who had been in the field with him against the Numidians, and to
whom he gave a dinner at an eating-house, as being his old
fellow-soldiers. For above an hour he sat drinking with the brave old
fellows; then, quitting them, he went to look at the Canopic way by
night, as it was but a few paces thither from the scene of his
hospitality. It was brilliantly lighted with tapers, torches, and lamps,
and the large houses behind the colonnades were gaudy with rich hangings;
only the handsomest and stateliest of them all had no kind of decoration.
This was the abode of the Jew Apollodorus.

In former years the finest hangings had decorated his windows, which had
been as gay with flowers and lamps as those of the other Israelites who
dwelt in the Canopic way, and who were wont to keep the festival in
common with their heathen fellow-citizens as jovially as though they were
no less zealous to do homage to Dionysus. Apollodorus had his own reasons
for keeping aloof on this occasion from all that was connected with the
holiday doings of the heathen. Without dreaming that his withdrawal could
involve him in any danger, he was quietly sitting in his house, which was
so splendidly furnished as to seem fitted for some princely Greek rather
than for a Hebrew. This was especially the case with the men's
living-room, in which Apollodorus sat, for the pictures on the walls and
pavement of this beautiful hall--of which the roof, which was half open,
was supported on columns of the finest porphyry--represented the loves of
Eros and Psyche; while between the pillars stood busts of the greatest
heathen philosopher