At his table we fared pretty well, for his prices were low, his wine drinkable, and most of his food eatable, though we did not try a second time the viands for which he had the briskest demand: a very greasy pork stew of which he was inordinately proud, amazingly rank ham, and incredibly strong Campanian cheese; all three of which seemed to delight his customers, who were an astonishing medley of slaves and freemen: porters, stevedores, inspectors' assistants, coopers, mariners, jar- markers, gig-drivers, teamsters, drivers of all sorts of hired vehicles, drovers who herded cattle from Ostia to the cattle-market, vendors of sulphur-dipped kindling-splints, collectors of street filth and others equally low in class, equally novel to me. Colgius took a fancy to us and undertook to show us Rome. It struck me oddly that, whereas Nona, in every fiber an Umbrian Gaul, and Maternus, who had spent all his life beyond the Alps, had both, at first glance, recognized us for what we were, Roman master and Greek servant, this Roman of the Romans, keen for personal profit, habituated to the sight of men from all ports, accepted us for Gallic provincials, and never suspected that we were anything else. CHAPTER XX CHARIOTEERING Sight-seeing in Rome, in the guise of Gallic wastrels, under the tutelage of a harborside slum host, was truly an experience for me after my former station as a nobleman of the Republic, and my ruin and disguise and flight. I positively enjoyed it. First of all Colgius was for showing us over the stables of the Reds, for he was mad about racing and boasted that he had bet on the Reds since he was six years old and his father gave him his first copper. But I demurred and pointed out that none of the racing-stables were fit places for us, since a steady stream of Spanish horses trickled through Marseilles and on through Vada Sabatia and Genoa to Rome, and there was too great a probability that we might come face to face with some groom, hostler or hanger-on from Marseilles who would know us at sight. Colgius yielded to this argument and agreed that we must avoid all the racing stables. This greatly relieved us, since, while neither I nor Agathemer had been devotees of the sport, both of us had been through all six establishments often enough to be likely to be recognized in any one of them. Baffled in his first choice and, apparently, in his only choice, Colgius asked us what we wanted to see. I said I wanted most to see a day of racing in the circus, blurting out this rather foolish utterance without reflection, merely because I thought it would seem natural to him. He replied that that would be easy, but that the next racing day was day after tomorrow: what would we like to do today? I said I wanted first of all to be shown the Temple of Mercury, for I wanted to make an offering to the god. "Oh, yes," he said, "Mercury is your chief god in Gaul, isn't he, and you put him ahead of Jupiter. What is it you call him?"