=18. The Processions Attending Great Nobles.=--Suddenly there is a partial silence. Youths in livery are moving down the street flourishing white wands: “Way, way for his Excellency,” they are shouting. Instantly the word flies around, “The Praetor Fundinus!” Hucksters cease shouting. Everybody stands still and all who wear hoods or hats hastily bare their heads,[10] for the praetor represents “The Majesty of the Roman People.” Behind his _viatores_ (“Way Clearers”) a full score of toga-clad clients swing into sight marching ahead of the great man. He rides in a blue tasseled litter borne by eight tall Cappadocians of equal height and pace. Just in front of them march two haughty lictors, attendants of honor, with bundles of rods, the official “fasces,” conspicuously resting upon their shoulders.[11] Close beside the litter walks a well-groomed man with a marked Greek profile--the confidential freedman and man of business of the magistrate. Behind trail more clients and a greater retinue of slaves. Fundinus himself heeds little the incessant greetings cast at him. He can be seen lolling on his cushions, with the little curtains thrown back just enough to show the purple embroidery on his official toga. A book, half unrolled, is in his hand--for it is the best of form to affect a certain bookishness in scenes of great distraction. As the praetor’s train advances, however, it is met by another headed in the opposite direction. A great concourse appears of handsome slaves, all wearing brown coats and each bearing a box or package upon his shoulder; then follows a group of pretty Levantine slave-girls gaudily clad, then a brown Egyptian boy carrying a pet monkey; then a simpering Celtic maid with a large basket from which peers a small and very uneasy lap-dog; next a perfect hedge of upper slaves and freedmen, some carrying musical instruments, some small caskets obviously crammed with valuables, and some conveying ostentatiously costly garments, and then borne high by her eight slaves in light red livery comes a great lady herself--an ex-consul’s wife, the multi-millionaire Faustina. =19. A Great Lady Traveling.=--“Her Magnificence” (_Clarissima_) also leans back on her cushions with a studied attitude of indifference and boredom, letting the whole street take in the silky sheen of her embroidered mantle, the gem-set handle of her ostrich fan, the gold dust that her maids have sprinkled on her tall pile of brown hair, and the great pearls that shed luster from her ears, neck, and every finger. She is merely making one of her incessant pilgrimages between her Viminal palace and some one of her ten country villas. She would feel disgraced to travel with less than about two hundred slaves and freedmen. Very likely her grandfather was a freedman himself; what matter?--official rank yields to the conquering flash of gold.