"But how have you fallen into such a wretched situation after having been the entertainer of your people?"
"I committed the madness of founding the first theatre in Rome, in imitation of those in Greece. It was a wooden enclosure on the outskirts of the city. I borrowed money; I contracted debts; the populace came to laugh, but they gave little. I was ruined, and the wise laws of Rome condemn him who cannot pay to become the slave of his creditor. This baker who used to laugh at my comedies, and who gladly loaned me sacks of copper, is now getting even for his former show of admiration by making me turn his mill, because I cost less than an ass. Every peal of laughter in the past is transformed into a blow with a stick dealt across my back. The fate of poets! You Greeks also thanked Æschylus for his verses by pelting him with stones, yet he was ever a freeman."
Plautus became silent, but after a melancholy smile he added:
"I trust in the future. I shall not always have to be a slave; perhaps I shall find someone who will give me back my liberty. The Romans who make war and see new countries return with milder customs and with a love of art. I shall be free, I will found a new theatre, and then,----then----"
Hope shone in his glance, as if he saw the realization of the dreams with which he embellished his gloomy den, while, panting like a beast, he turned the enormous cone of stone.
A noise was heard from within the house, and before his master's children could see him Plautus ran to yoke himself again to the mill-spindle, while the Greek left the place, astounded by this episode.
What a people this, which converted its debtors into slaves and turned its poets into beasts of burden!
The Greek sauntered back through the Forum munching his loaf of bread. He was waiting for the Senate to assemble, and to pass away the time he climbed to the crest of the Palatine Hill, the sacred ground which was the cradle of Rome. He visited the Lupercal Grotto where Romulus and Remus had been suckled by the she-wolf. At the entrance to the narrow cave, denuded by the winter, the Ruminal fig tree extended its naked branches, the famous tree in the shade of which the twin founders of the city had frolicked. Near it on a granite pedestal stood the wolf, in dark and lustrous bronze, the work of an Etruscan artist, with the hideous half-open fauces, and her belly bristling with a double row of gleaming teats to which two naked children clung, sprawling on the ground.
