shambling into the Blue committee-room, tore off the favour, trampled on it, and began distributing crowns and palms of victory and pawfuls of newly-minted money.
The next day, as soon as the suppliants had presented themselves at the race-post, as the Blue charioteers had suggested, Cappadocian John sent a party of Greens to remove them. The Blues raised a fearful outcry, and most of the Greens among the audience did not understand the rights and wrongs of the case: so far from showing sympathy, they hissed the poor creatures as they were being bustled out through the Green benches. Damocles grew more angry than ever.
The last race that afternoon was a most important one. It was the anniversary of the Emperor's accession and he had promised to award a work of art, a chariot team in full career (the horses executed in silver, the chariot and driver in gold) to the management of the winning faction. It would be a close race, to judge by the betting. Damocles determined to gain popular applause by driving as he had never driven before. He knew that when he was conducted by the faction-leaders, garlanded and with a cross of flowers in his hand, to prostrate himself in homage and accept the prize from the Emperor's hands (as would happen if he helped to win the race), he would have an opportunity to make an appeal. The Emperor Anastasius was an affable man, and ready to do justice in cases of this sort.
It would be out of place to give a full account of the race; but let me at least describe the seventh and last lap of it. First one Colour had led, then the other, then the first again. By the end of the fifth lap, when the competitors had already covered a full mile, the position was that the first Green chariot was in the inside berth, hugging the central barrier; the second Blue chariot, which had been making the pace magnificently, lay just a little behind, in the next. Next came Damocles' chariot, the second Green, in the outside berth, closely challenged by the first Blue in the berth next to him on the inside. Victory seemed assured for the Greens now, and the Blue beeches were looking glum when the final turn of the course was reached. But then Damocles suddenly knew that his horses were exhausted: no amount of skill with the whip or exhortations with the voice would draw another spurt of speed out of them. The distance between the two inside chariots, the first Green and the second Blue, and the two outside ones, the first Blue and the second Green, had lessened greatly, though the same relative positions were maintained. The first Blue was going strongly now and was capable of snatching a victory not only from Damocles, in the second Green, but from the two leaders. So Damocles took a swift decision at the turn: he slightly infringed on the first Blue's course and then reined in suddenly. His intention, of course, was to foul the off-wheel of the enemy chariot, and so put it out of the running — leaving his partner in the inside berth to make sure of victory. This trick is a legitimate one, but seldom played, because of the danger to the life of the man who plays it: the chances are that the chariot will overturn and that he will break a limb, or be kicked to death, or strangled in the reins, which are tightly tied around his middle, before he can cut himself free with his hook. Damocles, however, risked the danger, and was so intent on not missing his aim, and there was so much dust and shouting, that he did not notice what was happening in the two inner berths. His partner, the first Green, had been jostled by the second Blue and had fouled the race-post and come to grief; but the near trace-horse of the second Blue had strained a tendon in the course of the manoeuvre, which obliged the team to pull up. As a result, the first Blue was able to avoid the danger from Damocles' wheel, as he could not have done if his partner had still been running just ahead of him: he made a wonderful inward swerve and scraped past, to win comfortably from Damocles, who was left standing.
It was a clear case of bad luck, as all discriminating judges would have agreed; yet the Greens were so disappointed that they felt obliged to find a scapegoat. The scapegoat was not the first Green charioteer, who was lying stunned on the ground in the ruins of his chariot, but my master Damocles. For Damocles, after his partner had crashed, had been left in the leading position with only a hundred yards more to go for victory, and had unaccountably reined in. It can be imagined that Cappadocian John put the worst possible construction on his behaviour, and accused him of selling the race to the Blues. The evidence that he offered for the accusation was that two Blue charioteers had been seen speaking to Damocles on- the previous morning in a City wine-shop, and that Damocles had a grudge against the faction management in the matter of the Bear Mastership. So at a committee-meeting held immediately after the race he was suspended from driving for a year; and that night he killed himself, after an assault on the Green Dancing Master, one of whose eyes he struck out with a flick of his whip, aiming across the full length of the charioteers' dressing-room.
Our fortunes now seemed at a very low ebb, because my master Damocles had been generous with his earnings and saved practically nothing; and now his wife and Antonina his daughter were cast off by the faction as the relicts of a charioteer who had disgraced his Colour. As for myself, I was in danger of being sold again to another master.
But all ended well, because at a meeting of the Blue management two days later Thomas the Treasurer related his dream about the bear. He assured the committee that the little girl who had ridden on the bear's back in his dream was one of the daughters of the deceased Green Bear Master, who had sat garlanded as suppliants at the race-post. He urged them to offer the vacant post of Blue Bear Master to Peter, who was now stepfather to these little girls: for it was clear that good hick would come to the Blues if they did so.
There was some opposition to the suggestion, but Thomas pointed out that Peter was well trained in the Green bear-stables, and that they would be doing themselves a service as well as putting the Greens to shame, if they chose him. Peter was appointed the Blue Bear Master and made a success of his term of office, and the whole family changed their colour from Green to Blue; which is a very rare occurrence among Hippodrome families. To show his gratitude to the family of Damocles, he gave us board and lodging in his own house; and his wife and daughters as well as himself swore by the God Poseidon (the most respectable oath among Hippodrome people), that they would do everything in their power to assist us. So we were comforted, and Damocles' widow did not need to sell me. But in order not to be a burden to Peter, she persuaded the Dancing Master of the Blues to employ her as an actress at the Theatre — not as a dramatic actress on the stage, because she had not sufficient training for this, but as a variety actress in the orchestra-area. She could dance a little and strum a little on the lute and manage a tambourine quite well, so he used her. She trained her daughter Antonina from her earliest years as musician, juggler, dancer, and acrobat, and Antonina grew up as Blue in her feelings as her father Damocles had been Green. Antonina was soon greatly in request at supper-parties like Modestus's at Adrianople, and at community-dinners among the young coxcombs of the Blue faction, to which each member made some contribution either of food or drink.
Antonina remained on terms of intimate friendship with the three daughters of Acacius. Their names were Comito, Theodora, and Anastasia. But of these I wish chiefly to write about Theodora, the middle one in age, who was Antonina's senior by some two years and became her particular friend. As the three girls grew up they were each in turn put on the stage. Comito was a sleek, superbly made creature, and made a great success with the men, in spite of being a poor actress. She began to treat Theodora and Anastasia with disdain, because neither of them had her good looks, but she died pretty soon of the disease of her profession. Anastasia became contaminated too, and lost most of her teeth in a brawl at a community dinner. But Theodora was undamageablc. It was generally agreed that she had a devil in her — a devil of implacability and insatiability. Mow often in after-life did Antonina have occasion to thank the gods that Theodora was her ally, not her enemy!
I remember Theodora first as a six-year-old child, dressed in a little sleeveless frock of the sort that slave children wear, carrying her mother's folding-stool for her to the orchestra-area before a performance. She scowled or snapped at any other children she met; her mother used to say that one ought to hang a notice around her neck like those seen in the bear-stables warning visitors: 'This animal is malevolent.' Theodora had become embittered by being jeered at by her former little friends among the Greens for that unlucky history of her father's death and her mother's remarriage.
Antonina, too, had insults thrown at her, as the daughter of a charioteer who had sold a race to the Blues. But she was not a physical fighter like Theodora, who went for her tormentors with nails and teeth. She took her revenge in other ways: chiefly — as she grew a little older — by frightening her enemies into imagining themselves the victims of her magical powers. She gradually came herself to believe in the magic. Certainly she had one or two remarkable successes with it. One day she was rudely kicked from behind by Asterius, the Dancing Master of the Greens, whose machinations had been the original cause of all the trouble. She made an image of him in tallow- paunchy, bin-nosed, one-eyed — and uttered certain prayers to Hecate, who is the Old Goddess who manages these things, and then drove out his remaining eye with a pin. Before the moon had reached her third quarter, this villain was blinded: a spindle thrown by an angry woman at her husband somehow struck him instead, as he was passing by their street door. Theodora much admired Antonina for this action, and together they tried to destroy
