Explore "Accompanied on the Flute" by Thomas Anstey Guthrie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Consul Duilius was entering Rome in triumph after his celebrated defeat of the Carthaginian fleet at Mylae. He had won a great naval victory for his country with the first fleet that it had ever possessed -- which was naturally a gratifying reflection, and he would have been perfectly happy now, if he had only been a little more comfortable.
But he was standing in an extremely rickety chariot, which was crammed with his nearer relations and a few old friends, to whom he had been obliged to send tickets. At his back stood a slave who held a heavy Etruscan crown on the Consul's head, and whenever he thought his master was growing conceited, threw in the reminder that he was only a man after all -- a liberty which at any other time he might have had good reason to regret.