Now the boys can go back to their studies again. Horatius will take his satchel with books and writing-tablet, and go to the grammar-school every day, but his best teaching is at home with Doxius, who is reading with him the Greek poets, and who has grown to love the boy and to be loved by him.

One day his father takes him to the senate for the consuls have decreed that a senator may sometimes bring his son to listen to the debates, and learn to what duties he will probably be himself called.

Perhaps you would not care to have me tell all that he hears and sees there; but, on the next holiday the boys play senate, and we will see how they do it.

It wasn't a Saturday afternoon, but it was on some similar holiday, that Horatius, and Valerius, and Julius, and the others played senate, using the place enclosed by the pillars of a portico for their meeting, and conducting the affairs of the city as wisely as they could.

Horatius was consul, and he assembled his senators and began to ask their opinions on the very subject he had heard discussed when he went to the real senate with his father.

"But stop," said the boy, "before we begin, let's see who shall be tribune,—somebody must speak for the plebs. We ought to vote and choose a tribune." "Well," said Valerius, "run into the potter's street, and round to the corn-dealers' corner, and call in the plebeian boys to a comitia, and we will choose a tribune of the people.

So they vote, and Calpurnius is chosen tribune.

"Now," said Horatius to him, "when Julius makes his long speech, and we are going to vote that the treasures of Attalus shall go into the public treasury, you must stand up and say, 'Veto,' and that will stop us, and then you can propose to have them divided for the poor plebeians."

So the boys played senate and practised the art of governing. Many a time they sent out a consul at the head of a little army, and brought him home in triumph.

The Ides of Quintilis had passed (can you tell what time that is by our reckoning?), and, the knights in purple, with their olive crowns, had ridden in a gay procession to the temple of Castor and Pollux; and now it was just at the harvest time that one of the boys' plays became earnest, for Scipio came home from Spain, bringing treasures and captives, and he was decreed a triumph and a crown.

We will stand with the boys in the crowded streets, or on the platform if we can get a place, and see it.

The great procession is marshalled outside the gates, and starts from the Campus Martius, where we went together on May Day, you remember.

As it enters the city gate, where the magistrates meet it, we shall hear the trumpets sound a charge, and we shall be ready to shout with the people "Io triomphe," as the head of the column appears in the Via Sacra (sacred street). First the lictors to clear the way, then the trumpeters, then the victims for sacrifice—the oxen with gilded horns and oak wreaths. Next look at the wagons full of spoils, treasures of armor, cups of gold and silver, costly cloths and purple robes. Then come the poor captives, fathers, mothers, and even little children, to be made a show for the honor of the conqueror.

And now everybody crowds forward, for here is the General himself, sitting in his chariot and wearing the toga picta, a purple dress embroidered all over with gold, and the tunica palmata wrought with palm branches. See the laurel branch in one hand, and the victorious eagle on the sceptre in the other. His laurel crown of triumph is held above his head, and all the knights and soldiers follow him with laurel boughs.

Look there is a soldier with the civic crown of oak leaves. We will all shout for him, for he has saved the life of a Roman citizen in battle. And here comes Caius Cossus with his mural crown like a little turreted wall. That means that he was the first to scale the walls of the besieged city. And there is many a chain of gold and medal to be seen as we look down the long ranks.

Through the Via Sacra, then across the Forum, and up the Capitoline Hill to the Temple of Jupiter, already gloriously decorated with the spoils of many wars. And there the General lays his crown in the lap of the great statue, the sacrifice is offered, and a long day of splendors is over.

The boys have followed every step of the way, but they aren't at all tired,—oh no!—still their supper of bread and honey does taste good, and they even wish that they might also have a bit of the roasted pig, that is carried into the dining-room where the father entertains his friends in honor of the day.

The next day, while the boys are at play, we may overhear Valerius telling a story he has heard from his father, of a triumph long ago, that ended in the founding of a temple to Castor and Pollux, who had given victory to the Romans. "The boys helped found that temple, and the girls too," said Publius. "I wish they would build one now, then we could go to sprinkle the place with brook water, river water, and spring water. And then we could take hold of the ropes and help pull the first great stone into place."

"My grandfather threw gold and silver in with the first stone of that temple." cried Julius, "And so did mine," said Horatius.

But time goes on, and our Roman year is drawing to a close.

Early in December the father of little Valerius dies, and his funeral is celebrated with orations, and with shows of gladiators and wild beasts in the Forum and the Circus. These gladiators are Gauls and Germans—barbarians the Romans call them—taken in war and trained to fight with each other or with beasts for the amusement of the people. You will hear more of such barbarians by and by, if you read my next chapter.

Do you begin to think that there is nothing but fighting in Rome? If you do you will be more than half right. But we are coming now to a real, merry, happy time.

Perhaps you have guessed what it is, for you know I said it was already December. Don't you believe it is Christmas? It is, at any rate, in December, and would be just about our Christmas time. But it wasn't Christmas after all, and why?

Where do we get the name Christmas? "From the name Christ," you will answer. And do you realize that when Horatius was a boy it was more than a hundred years before the birth of Christ, so you see it couldn't be Christmas, and yet what games they had, what presents to each and all. How the servants were allowed to be equal with their masters and mistresses, and it seemed the right of every one to be merry.

They called it Saturnalia; but I don't care what name it had,—it certainly had a delightful Christmas feeling about it.

The poor people had gifts of corn and oil and honey, which meant bread and butter and sugar, (you know they had never heard of sugar in those days). And the boys had new tunics and new shoes. They wore neither stockings nor trousers.

Baskets of figs and nuts and pomegranates and apples were sent from friend to friend. And here comes a slave to the door, bringing to the father of Horatius a beautiful set of marble chess-men, a present from his friend Valerius, and with it a letter full of kind greetings and good wishes. Not a letter written on paper, but on two waxed tablets tied together and the string sealed with a bit of wax. After he has read it, he can rub it out and write an answer on the same tablet.

In the home of Horatius, and perhaps in many another besides, a good deed was done that made that Christmas Day memorable.

All the year the father of Horatius had noticed how faithfully and well the Greek slave Doxius had watched over and instructed his son, and he has resolved to give him, on the Saturnalia, the very best gift that he can.

Do you guess what?

If you can't, come with us before the magistrate, and see the glad face of Doxius when his master lays a hand upon his head and says

"This man I will to be free."

Then the slave passed out from under the hand of his master, and next from the rod of the prætor, and became a freed man, and put on the cap and the toga.

His master goes home to hang a chain upon the household Lar in honor of this act, and Doxius himself comes back to continue his teaching, though he feels like a different man, master now of himself.

Of course the boys are having a vacation, and perhaps we owe the custom of our Christmas holidays to them. Theirs even reached as far as New Year's Day, though it was not New Year, but only the Kalends of January. Yet it was the day when new magistrates came into office, and a day for giving presents. And since January is named for Janus, it must of course have a festival day for its god.

The boys have been very busy practising for a grand performance on this day. It is called the "Game of Troy." Nobody can join in it but the sons of magistrates. Horatius is going, and Valerius and Julius and thirty-six others; but the sons of the potter and the scythe-maker and the armorer and the weaver are not allowed; their fathers used to be slaves, are now only freed men; some of them are the clients or dependents of the father of Horatius. The boys who have the privilege think it a great honor to take part in this play.

There is a fine old poem which you will perhaps read some day in Latin, that tells us all about this Game of Troy. It is in fact a mimic battle not unlike the tournaments of after-years.

There are to be three captains, each with his band of twelve boys. They will perform in the great circus, and all the city will come to see.

How they have practised and drilled. They had to train their horses as well as themselves, for there is to be a cavalry charge, a pretended flight, then a sudden wheel-about upon the pursuing enemy and a grand discharge of arrows to drive them back, and last of all, a sort of curious, mazy dance on horseback in and out, back and forward—until the spectators see nothing but a mingled mass of thirty-nine boys and thirty-nine horses; and then at a word, as if by magic, the little commander, Julius, brings them into close and orderly ranks before the consuls, and the great circus echoes with applause.

It is a great day for Roman boys. Wouldn't you like to be there to see?

Horatius isn't a captain,—indeed he is the youngest boy there, and of course takes the lowest place; but he did his part well, rode his white horse handsomely, and looked like a gallant little soldier in his purple tunic with his golden bulla hanging on his breast, and his bright quiver of arrows over his shoulder.

Doxius had trained him carefully, that he might sit erect and hold up his head gracefully, even if his horse did prance and curvet when the trumpet sounded for the game to begin.

Besides the boys' Game of Troy, there was, of course, a procession and a sacrifice.

Then followed more school-days, and plays outside the walls, under the arches of the great aqueduct, which were good places for forums or circuses; and then we reach the Ides of February, the feast of Lupercus, or Pan.

This time I will ask you how we shall celebrate it, for now you have lived here long enough to know.

"A sacrifice and a procession," did you say?

Certainly, you are right; but there were some odd things about this festival that I think I must tell you.

Perhaps you know that Pan was the god of the shepherds. If you have seen pictures of him, you must remember that he has goat's feet. So a goat was the sacrifice offered, and with it a dog, because of the sheep-dogs that the shepherds always have.

It was an old, old custom, brought into Rome from some more distant time and place—from Greece, perhaps,—and as Horatius is to take part in it, you will see how curious it is.

He has been chosen, with his friend Valerius, to join in the sacrifice; so the two boys stand beside the priests, and when the poor animals are killed, a priest smears the boys' foreheads with the bloody knife, and immediately another wipes off the blood with a flock of wool dipped in milk. Then the boys must laugh, whether they feel like laughing, or not.

As Horatius comes home to his father's house on the beautiful hill, he passes a band of German gladiators returning from the amphitheatre, carrying with them a comrade badly wounded in the fight. They have angry faces, and I do not wonder, do you? It is not a manly nor kindly thing that they should be made to hurt or kill each other as an amusement for the Romans.

Do you begin now to realize how the Romans, and the Greeks too, and the Persians, are showing us the homes of our great, great, great-grandfathers?

And where shall we go next?

To no rich city, with temples and palaces and grand processions, but to a rough, wild country, with scattered villages, great forests, and hordes of half-savage warriors; and there we shall find Wulf, the Saxon boy.