Old Aspasia came stumbling after him, crying out frantically, for already she heard the sound of a little waterfall, and she knew that Petronius would not hesitate to plunge into the brook. Happily he waited a moment for his goose, and Aspasia caught him by the hand. "Naughty, what dost thou think to do?" He pointed to a little island in the stream, his favorite playground since he had discovered the slippery stepping-stones that led to it. So the old woman had to guide him across while the goose swam.

Photograph furnished by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The stream was the boundary on one side of his father's country place, and beyond was rough, unoccupied country. Until today the little island had always been a dull place to Aspasia and the goose, but today there was something new on the stones. Petronius made a dash toward it. It seemed like a bundle of clothes but as he pulled at it, suddenly a wee baby lay there before his eyes. Aspasia jumped and caught up the child in her arms.

"Alas, alas!" she cried, "poor baby, what is this? Thy father would not lift thee in his arms? Thou art cast out?" For Aspasia knew well what it meant when a baby was abandoned in such a place. Some cruel father had not wanted the little child, and so had not taken him in his arms when he was born, as Marcus Petronius had joyfully taken his little son; and according to the Roman law, if a father did not want his child, he might have him cast away in some lonely place to live or die as chance might be.

"A little boy, too," Aspasia was murmuring, "and nicely wrapped about with fine wool. Ah, Petronius, rejoice, rejoice indeed, that thou hast that about thy neck." She pointed to the gold bulla  shining in the sun, the little charm to guard him from all evil that his father had hung about his neck on the day when he was given his name.

Petronius was tremendously excited and began tugging at the slave's tunic to draw her to the house. But Aspasia shook her head. "I dare not,—who knows? Thy mother will not want to trouble with him, even to gain thereby another slave. No, we must leave the baby." Petronius did not care what she said; off he flew, up the path to the garden where his mother was reclining, fanned by two slaves while a third read to her from the poets. He clutched at his mother's stola, crying wildly, "Veni, veni"  (come, come), and his excitement was so great that she went with him. She had a tender heart and when she saw the tiny baby, sweet and clean and crying piteously, and heard her own little son's pleading for his new plaything, she could not resist them. She bade one of the slaves take the child and care for him. So he was kept and brought up in the slaves' quarters, and he was called Perditus, the lost one. From the beginning he belonged to Petronius, and Petronius was given the only thing found with the baby, a curious little bronze lamp of fine workmanship which had on it a picture of a two-faced god, Janus, the god of beginnings.

"But why two faces?" demanded Petronius.

"He sees both ways, does Janus, the beginning and the end, good and bad things, and mostly bad," Aspasia answered; and added, "Always war, war. Rome making war upon us all." For the old slave woman was a Greek made captive in one of the wars in the East. "And does Janus make the wars begin?" Petronius asked. "No," old Aspasia shook her head, "it is the wicked men who are always fighting, fighting, stealing and killing; they are the ones who make the wars and keep the gates of Janus open."

"What gates?" asked Petronius.

"In Rome," she answered, "and some day thou wilt see them. They say they never will be closed while men make war. Cruel, cruel race," she muttered, "I would I could see those gates shut and no more slaves brought to Rome."

Not understanding, but wondering what it all meant, little Petronius put these things away in his mind.

It was not long afterwards, when the family went back to Rome, that he had a chance to see what the old nurse meant. For his father took him to the Forum, once the market place and now the center of all that happened in Rome. There were the temples of the gods and the open meeting place of the people and the hall in which the senate sat. His father was in great good humor and pointed out men and buildings to his son, as if he were really old enough to care about them and remember. "There is the House of the Vestals," he said, "the Vestals who keep always burning the sacred fire of the state, and so they keep Rome safe. And there is the fountain where the Heavenly Twins, Castor and Pollux,—thou knowest them,—watered their horses after the battle. And yonder there is the temple of Janus, whose faces are on thy lamp."

At that Petronius remembered Aspasia's talk of the gates. "Janus? with the two faces? where?" he asked, and his father showed him a building like a big gateway with bronze doors wide open, and he told his little son again what the nurse had told him, that those doors were open and would stay open as long as wars went on. "I want to see them shut," the little fellow said. "Let's tell them to shut them so we can see." His father laughed and shook his head. "Octavius, who is our only hope, Octavius, whom thou art going to see, he alone can do that. And who knows?" he added. "Perhaps he may accomplish even that. We must wait. But come now, and thou shalt see."

The Sacred Way passed the little circular temple of Vesta (A)  and reached the Forum at the Arch of Augustus (B), and the Temple of the Deified Julius Cæsar (C). Beyond this, across the old Forum Market Place (F), was the new Senate House (G)  planned by Julius Cæsar. The Temple of Janus was to the left nearer the river. (From Breasted, \"Ancient Times\")

They went to the curia, or senate house, and while Marcus Petronius, who was a senator, went inside, he left his son on the porch of the curia  with a slave, telling him to watch. No one but the senators might go inside, but through the open door Petronius saw many men dressed in pure white togas and seated on benches, and gathered together at one end trophies taken in the wars from conquered peoples. It seemed very solemn to the boy. Then there was a noise as all the senators rose in their places. He looked to see what it meant, and there, nearing the steps of the curia, was a young man with twelve men ahead of him, each carrying a bundle of rods with an ax head in the middle. "The new consul, Octavius, and the twelve lictors," the slave whispered to him. The young man was rather small and a little lame, and he seemed timid, yet he came on resolutely. Something about him pleased the little Petronius, and he called out, "Salve!"  (hail), but the slave bade him hush. Before the young man went inside he stopped to ask the augurs if all was well, for no public meeting was held in Rome without finding out whether the gods approved, and the augurs alone could tell this. They watched a piece of the sky, and when a bird flew across to the right, they assured him that it was a good sign and that the senate had the good will of the gods that day. Then the young man went in, and Petronius saw no more of him. But when his father came home that night he said eagerly, "Thou didst see him, carissime?  And didst mark him well? That was Octavius, the hope of Rome. Forget him not." Impressed by his father's excitement and his own memory of the young man's face, Petronius did not forget, though no one could have told him then that he had looked on the man who was to be Imperator Augustus, the greatest emperor of Rome.

Augustus is shown in his war dress,—the short tunic, the metal breastplate and the cloak thrown over his arm. Cupid is at his feet

That was a memorable day for a little boy, but after it he went back to Perditus and old Aspasia and to the learning of lessons with his mother, for it was from her that he learned to read and to speak his Latin carefully; and from her he came to know the stories of the gods and Rome, of Romulus and Remus, Vesta, Janus and the great Jove. But when he was seven, his mother gave him into his father's keeping, for now she had his baby sister to care for, and it was time that Petronius should learn a boy's lessons from his father. His father was a great man and had once been a friend of Cæsar's. He knew many people and was busy with many affairs; yet he liked to take his son with him of a morning when he walked to the Forum or to have him at his side in the atrium  of his house when clients came to do business or friends came to talk with him, and he taught Petronius to know them all by name.

But as he himself was so busy, he hired a learned Greek called Hieron to teach Petronius; and other boys, sons of his friends, took lessons with him. Hieron taught them to write on a wax tablet with a sharp-pointed stylus such letters as some day one of them might need to write if he became governor of a province; and he taught them to do sums by pushing beads on the abacus and to figure with the difficult Roman numerals. Also they learned by heart the Twelve Tables of the Law. Petronius was fond of school, and he was always ready when very early in the morning Perditus came to fetch his books and to go with him to the schoolroom.

Who this Roman is no one knows, but it is a true portrait of a man who lived about the time of Julius Cæsar or of Augustus. (Photograph furnished by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

But when summer came he was even more ready to leave school and home to go to his father's villa. There the days were full of happy sights and sounds: the bees swarming in and out of their hives, the slaves cutting the yellow grain or gathering apricots, pears or figs, the doves strutting about or cooing softly to each other, the peacocks proud of their beauty. And when the hot rays of the sun beat fiercely upon their hilltop, he and Perditus would slip away while the rest of the household was taking its noontime siesta, and would go to the little brook where Perditus had been found. There they would dip and swim and play in and out of the water for hours together.