We know the scene. At first--in the full blaze of the noonday sun--standing silent and nearly deserted, except by a few workmen and artisans, who here and there lingered to complete the festive preparations, or by scattered parties of the praetorian guard, who, in holiday armor, moved slowly to and fro, to watch that order was maintained. Later--when the shadows deepened, and the air grew cooler--the avenues and prominent positions along the established route of the ovation beginning to fill with that great concourse of varied nationalities and conditions which only the imperial city could display. In the open streets a disorderly rabble of slaves and bondmen--pouring in steady streams from their kennels behind the palaces and from the unhealthy purlieus of such quarters as had been spared from the architectural encroachments of the wealthy, and allowed to fester in their own neglected corruption. Gathered together in close fraternity, the Briton, the Goth, the African, and the Jew--each bearing his badge of life-long servitude, some even wearing marks of recent chastisement, but almost all awaiting the approaching spectacle with pleased and animated countenances, and in seeming forgetfulness that so many of their own number had graced former displays, and, by their degradation, had afforded amusement to other equally unsympathetic concourses. Among them, the lesser Romans--citizens in name, indeed, but, from their poverty and the overbearing exactions of the patricians, almost as much in slavery as those around them--disdainfully asserting their free birth, and in turn contemned by the slaves themselves, as men to whom liberty was but another title for slow starvation, and who would not dare to resent the vilest insults heaped upon them by noble-owned and protected menials--and now equally with the common herd obliged to submit to the strong argument of sword and lance, as, every little while, the soldiers along the line drove the whole writhing crowd, without distinction, into smaller and more confined compass. Here and there, knights and soldiers of high rank--riding up on horseback, and pushing through the struggling mass of slaves to the front, or more leisurely, but to equal purpose, waiting until their own menials had gone before, and, with mingled threats and blows, had cleared out a vacant space for them. Other crowds, standing in favorable positions upon housetops and upon hastily constructed stagings; and more especially upon the great amphitheatre, whose arches were blackened with clusters of spectators, and whose summit, in place of the last few layers of stone, so soon to be adjusted, had its deep human fringe. Upon palace balconies, patricians and noble ladies, displaying a dazzling array of gold and purple and rare jewelry, and attended by Ethiopian slaves, who, in glittering armlets, stood behind, holding feathered canopies to shield their mistresses from the sun. All this confusing