AURELIUS returned from Syria with his victorious army in the nine hundred and twenty-ninth year of Rome, 176 of our era, ten years after the great pestilence. He had merely crushed a local rebellion, but a vast coalition of nomadic Arab tribes of the desert had been allied with the rebels, and to the Romans it seemed that their Emperor had won a great victory in a mighty campaign. Aurelius humored their mood, and with good judgment, for they needed all the encouragement possible. He arranged to have his return celebrated by shows of all kinds, theatrical performances, fights of gladiators, beast fights, horse-races uncountable and above all, by that thrilling procession of a victor and his armed soldiers through the city along the Sacred Street, up to the great temple on the Capitol, which was the highest honor an army and a commander could receive at the hands of the Roman government, which signalized a notable victory over notable odds, which was called a triumph. Of triumphs Rome had seen fewer than three hundred in more than nine hundred years. Not one of the three hundred had been as magnificent as the triumph of Aurelius. Its auxiliary spectacles were similarly magnificent. In particular the gladiatorial shows surpassed anything within the memory of the oldest living spectator. Causidiena, whose eyes troubled her greatly, found that watching the triumphal procession caused her so much pain that she absented herself from the remaining shows. To all of these, races, beast-fights and combats of gladiators, she insisted that the other five Vestals should go together. The arrangement was unusual, but no one could object, for no one would hint or even think that the sacred fire would be in any danger of going out with such a Chief Vestal as Causidiena caring for it or that she needed any other Vestal to assist her. Likewise her five colleagues were genuinely pleased that not one of them would miss any part of the shows. As the number was odd, Causidiena decreed that they should be conveyed to the spectacles each in her own state coach, attended by her maid of honor. The maids, of course, did not sit with the Vestals, but had seats far back with the populace. In their luxurious private box in the Colosseum the five Vestals sat in the ample front row arm-chairs. They were seated not according to seniority, but Numisia in the middle, Meffia and Brinnaria, as the youngest, on either side of her, Gargilia next Meffia, and Manlia next Brinnaria.