Tibur seemed to take a great fancy to me from the day that I slapped Little Boots down, and as any little boy would have been, I was very proud of the friendship of a gladiator. Although they may have been reputed to be the scum of the earth (and they certainly were so reputed), even nobles and senators bragged of their acquaintance with successful gladiators. Tibur only tolerated Little Boots on my account.

"He can't never amount to nothin'," he confided to me once, "with a crazy she-wolf for a mother and a weepin' willow for a father. Anyway, we don't have to worry about him: he won't never be emperor-there's too many ahead of him."

That remark opened my eyes. "Could Little Boots ever possibly be emperor of Rome?" I demanded.

"Sure," said Tibur, "if enough people were knifed or poisoned, he sure could-unless he was knifed or poisoned."

After that, I looked upon Little Boots with something of awe-for about two days; then I recalled that I was the great-grandson of Cingetorix, and after that, Little Boots never seemed particularly important to me.

When Little Boots was born there were five males of Julian or Claudian blood, any one of whom might reasonably have been expected to succeed to the imperial purple upon the death of Tiberius rather than this child. They were Germanicus, his father; Agrippa Posthumus, his uncle; Nero Caesar and Drusus Caesar, his older brothers; and Claudius, nephew of the Emperor. In addition to these, Tiberius Gemellus, grandson of Tiberius, was born when Little Boots was seven. So Tibur's prophecy that he would never be emperor seemed well-founded; but even before that, when Little Boots was two years old, Agrippa Posthumus, the madman, was murdered by order of Emperor Augustus; and there were more to follow. There were more ways than one to succeed to the Roman throne: there were poison and the dagger, with natural death running a poor third or not in the running at all.

But to get on with my story: I was in this camp in Germany for a year; then we all went to Rome. Germanicus was going to enjoy a triumph because he had captured a few poor mud huts.

Chapter II

A.U.C.770 [A.D. 17]

IT WAS in the Year of the Founded City 770 that we arrived in Rome for the triumph of Germanicus. I was eleven years old, and I had lived all my life among the primitive hamlets of timber, wattles, or mud of Briton. In Germany, I had seen sod huts even less admirable than the mean habitations of my native land. On the way south, I had marveled at Ravenna, and some of the other towns through which we passed had filled my childish mind with wonder; but they had not prepared me for Rome.

From Tibur's descriptions, I thought that I had gathered at least a hazy conception of the size and grandeur of the Eternal City; but when it broke upon my astounded vision, I realized that it had been far beyond the scope of even my childish imagination as well as Tibur's limited descriptive powers: he was much better at describing murders and gladiatorial combats.

I was struck dumb by the enormity of Rome, and I use that word in both its senses. Rome was not only vast but brutal. The villas and palaces, the temples, the baths, the amphitheater, the Forum were magnificent; but the great, close-packed rows of apartments and tenements, rearing their frowning and hideous fronts threateningly above the narrow streets-these were brutal.

In Ravenna, I had seen my first buildings of over one story, so you may imagine the effect that the tenements of Rome had upon me, towering to the full seventy-foot limit which Augustus had set. When I walked between them, I was always confident that the first high wind would topple them over upon me.

But of course you for whom these memoirs are set down upon my papyrus sheets, my son and my grandchildren, if I am ever so blessed, need no description of Rome: my only wish is to enable you to visualize the effect of this stupendous city upon a little barbarian boy.

After we arrived in Rome, we went at first to live at the villa of Antonia, the mother of Germanicus. Here, Little Boots had his hobby-horses, his toy houses and carts, and his other childish playthings. Of course I, being eleven, was disgusted by such infantile occupations; and though I was forced to play with him, I thought to divert his interest in them to more manly amusements; so I tried to teach him to spin tops, skip stones, and walk on stilts. After we had broken a few windows with the stones and Little Boots had fallen on his face from the stilts and gotten a bloody nose, Agrippina turned thumbs down on my educational curriculum, accompanying her dictum with a healthy swipe at the side of my head, which I ducked, thereby increasing her rage to such an extent that she threw an expensive vase at me: that woman had absolutely no self-control.