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Excerpt from Serenus and Other Stories of the Past and Present NE morning in the month of March 0 in the year 90, an hour before sun rise, a few men were assembled at the gate of the Mamertine prison, on the steps of the stairs that led from the slope of the Asylum to the street called that of the forum of Mars. In the middle was an old man with a long, white beard, thick veins on his forehead, and piercing eyes. Two empty litters lay at the bottom of the steps. It was cold; a drizzling rain fell; in the east the sky held a tinge of wan and miry yellow. The Eternal City, which was just emerging from darkness, displayed all round the Capitol a sort of wave of greyish houses, like a muddy sea after a storm. Huge monuments rose up here and there, and their wet summits shone feebly in the dawn. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.