So, flushed and merry over their adventure, the three lads rode on to Rome; but, ere they came in sight of the yellow Tiber, a fleet Numidian slave came running toward them, straight and swift as an arrow, right in the middle of the highway. Marcus recognized him as one of the runners of his uncle, the proconsul Titus Antoninus, and wondered as to his mission. The Numidian stopped short at sight of the party, and, saluting Marcus, handed him a small scroll. The boy unrolled it, and at once his face became grave. "For me; this for me?" he said, and, in seeming surprise, laid his hand upon the arm of his friend Aufidius. Then, as if remembering that he was a Stoic, whose desire was to show neither surprise, pleasure, nor pain, let what might happen, he read the scroll carefully, placed it in his mantle, and said, half aloud: "How ridiculous is he who is surprised at any thing which happens in life!" "What is it that so disturbs you, O Marcus?" Aufidius asked. "Friends," said the lad, "this scroll from my uncle Antoninus tells me that I am named by the Emperor's council as prefect[A] of the city while the consuls and magistrates are at the Latin Games." "Hail to thee, Prefect! hail! hail! hail!" cried Aufidius and Sejus, while the whole company joined in a respectful salute. "Would it were some one more worthy than I, Aufidius," said Marcus, solemnly. "Nay, it is rightly decreed, my Marcus," protested his friend, proudly. "Did not Hadrian, the Emperor, himself say of thee: '_Non Verus, sed Verissimus!_'[B] and who but thee, Marcus Verissimus--Marcus the most true--should be the governor of Rome?" "But think of it, friends! I am but a boy after all. Who can respect a prefect of sixteen?" still queried the modest Marcus. Sejus at once dipped into history. "And why not, O Marcus?" he asked. "Was not Tiberius Caesar a public orator at nine, and Augustus a master of the horse at seventeen? Was not Titus a quaestor[C] before he was eighteen, and the great Julius himself a priest of Jupiter at fourteen? And why, then, should not Marcus Verus, in whose veins runs the blood of the ancient kings, rightly be prefect of the city at sixteen?" "Thou art a good pleader, my Sejus," Marcus said pleasantly. "Since, then, I must be prefect, may I be a just one, and take for my motto the text of the good Rusticus: 'If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.' So, forward, my good friends! The lictors await me at the city gate." So they pressed forward and, with more decorum, rode along the Via Cassia and across the Milvian Bridge to the broader Via Lata and the city gate. Here an escort of six lictors with their rods of office welcomed Marcus, and, thus accompanied, the young magistrate passed down the Via Lata--the street now known as "the Corso," the great thoroughfare of modern Rome--to the palace of his uncle Antoninus, near the Coelian Gate. [Illustration: Lictors.]