Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the EmpireWhite, Edward Lucas
History
Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire
White, Edward Lucas
Historical fiction; Nobility -- Fiction; Rome -- History -- Empire, 30 B.C.-476 A.D. -- Fiction
I must have slept a full hour. I waked hot, but much refreshed, feeling
lively and full of interest in what was to come. Just after I waked I saw
the constabulary, the officers and about a third of the men on horseback,
the rest afoot, come up the road from the direction of their post, which
was south of the crag. The infantrymen, tramped their fastest and the
mounted men kept pace with them. They were evidently off on their wild-
goose chase. As they came into sight below me, after passing my perch, I
watched them double-quick northwards and wheel to their right into the
first crossroad. They were barely out of sight among the forested hills
when I saw momentarily, on the Highway, fully four miles to northward, on
a sunlit hilltop, what I took to be the first wagon of a train of teams
drawing cages of arena-beasts. I watched the road in that direction. What
I saw confirmed my conjecture. Soon the road to northward was filled from
its farthest visible hilltop to just below my crag with wagon-teams such
as I had many times watched transporting cages of lions, tigers, leopards,
panthers and the like. I made out also some cages which I was certain
contained hyenas.
Every little while I glanced the other way. Just as the first wagons of
the long train vanished from my sight into that section of the road
immediately below me where my crag hid it from my view, I saw appear on a
hilltop to southwards what I made sure was the travelling carriage of a
wealthy noble. I conjectured that it had inside of it the ransomable
propraetor. I kept my eyes on the road in that direction, only glancing
northward from time to time. One such glance caught a glimpse of a
travelling carriage among the beast-wagons; probably the procurator in
charge of the bullion.
After I had caught glimpses of it on several successive hilltops the
propraetor's carriage was near enough, on one of them, for me to recognize
it. Of course, I had known from childhood the travelling carriages of our
senate and nobility. As everybody knows, each, has a certain unmistakable
individuality. Our makers of travelling carriages never make two precisely
alike, and, what is more, the tastes of different families are so
different that patterns are very unlike. I recognized the carriage for
that of Faltonius Bambilio.
Why he was going out as propraetor of Asia so long after his term as
praetor was a puzzle to me. I accepted it as one of the countless
eccentricities of Imperial administration under Commodus. The
irregularities of the management of the provinces ruled in the name of
Caesar by prefects and procurators had notoriously extended to the
provinces ruled by proconsuls and propraetors in the name of the senate. I
had always disliked, despised and even hated Bambilio for his pomposity,
self-esteem and bad manners. I rejoiced at the opportunity to look on at
his capture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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