wo hundred captive wild beasts led the immense
procession; eight hundred pairs of gladiators came next, the glory and
strength of fighting manhood, with all their gleaming arms and
accoutrements, marching by the huge Flavian Amphitheatre, where sooner
or later they must fight each other to the death; then countless
captives of the East and South and West and North, Syrian nobles, Gothic
warriors, Persian dignitaries beside Frankish chieftains, and Tetricus,
the great Gallic usurper, in the attire of his nation, with his young
son whom he had dared to make a Senator in defiance of the Empire. Three
royal equipages followed, rich with silver, gold and precious stones,
one of them Zenobia's own, and she herself seated therein, young,
beautiful, proud and vanquished, loaded from head to foot with gems,
most bitterly against her will, her hands and feet bound with a golden
chain, and about her neck another, long and heavy, of which the end was
held by a Persian captive who walked beside the chariot and seemed to
lead her. Then Aurelian, the untiring conqueror, in the car of the
Gothic king, drawn by four great stags, which he himself was to
sacrifice to Jove that day according to his vow, and a long line of
wagons loaded down and groaning under the weight of the vast spoil; the
Roman army, horse and foot, the Senate and the people, a million,
perhaps, all following the indescribable magnificence of the great
triumph, along the Sacred Way, that was yellow with fresh strewn sand
and sweet with box and myrtle.

[Illustration: RUINS OF HADRIAN'S VILLA AT TIVOLI]

But when it was over, Aurelian, who was generous when he was not
violent, honoured Zenobia and endowed her with great fortune, and she
lived for many years as a Roman Matron in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. And
the Emperor made light of the 'Little Senate' and built his Sun temple
on the spot, with singular magnificence, enriching its decoration with
pearls and precious stones and with fifteen thousand pounds in weight of
pure gold. Much of that temple was still standing in the seventeenth
century and was destroyed by Urban the Eighth, the Pope who built the
heavy round tower on the south side of the Quirinal palace, facing Monte
Cavallo.

Monte Cavallo itself was a part of the Colonna villa, and its name, only
recently changed to Piazza del Quirinale, was given to it by the great
horses that stand on each side of the fountain, and which were found
long ago, according t