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 costumes except to his regular customers; strangers must not only make a deposit but produce as vouchers two Romans in good standing and well known. Seeing Maternus at a stick he added, easily and at once, that he sold costumes to any purchaser for cash, without question, and agreed to repurchase the same costumes after the Festival at nine denarii for every ten of the sale price, if the costumes were brought back in good condition; if damaged, he would even so repurchase them, but only at their damaged value.