One autumn day a little while after the harvest, a squat, brown man with large black eyes under great arched eyebrows set in a large head, and with unusually muscular shoulders and arms, was paddling slowly in a small boat across the yellow river. As he crossed he looked up attentively at the range of hills near the riverside, now partly covered with wooden huts. It was his experience that villages were good places to trade. They were especially so when, as now, pipes were sounding and the people were keeping holiday in honor of some god. He had gone to many places with his wares, but he had not as yet visited the town by the river. He was not even quite sure of its name. Some called it Rumon and some Roma. The people of his race were not very quick of ear, and often pronounced letters alike or confused them when they sounded alike,—as o and u, or b and p, or t and d. He himself was called Utuze, Otuz, or [pg 175]Odisuze, or Toto, according to the place where he happened to be. He came from Caere, the Etruscan seaport near the mouth of the river.

He had landed on this bank when he went up the river and approached the men from the settlement when they were working on their lands outside the walls, but they did not pay much attention to him. He could not tell whether they did not want his wares, or were suspicious, or simply did not understand what he was talking about. Now he was going to find out,—for he was of a persistent nature. Perhaps there would be some one at the festival who could speak both his language and theirs and tell them what he wanted to say. Then it would be easy.

On a glittering chain around his neck he carried a metal whistle, or trumpet, that could be heard a long distance and would pierce through most other noises as a needle pierces wool. On his back he carried in a sack a great variety of small things likely to please women and girls and children. He had learned a very long time ago that however shrewd a man may be, he will buy very silly things and pay any price you like for them when he is persuaded that they will please a girl. He also knew that men will buy things for their wives that no sensible woman ever buys for herself, and that if children cry for a toy long [pg 176]enough, they often get it. But the most important thing was, he knew, that a man who can attract attention to himself, no matter how he does it, generally sells more goods than one who depends only on the usefulness of what he has to sell. Therefore, when he set out on these trading journeys, he put on the most gorgeous and gay-colored clothes he could find, decorated with bright-colored figures, embroidered, and fringed or fastened with little glittering beads and ornaments such as he carried in his pack. Shining things were easier to sell than other things, as they were easier to look at. The peddler had given careful attention to selecting his stores, and Mastarna, the fat merchant from whom he got them, helped him. He wished to know more of these people in the town by the river.

The squealing of the peddler’s trumpet reached the ears of the soldiers, who were having a good time in their own way. They had their own games and frolics and feats of strength, and some of the young men from the town were there to look on and perhaps to join. Urso the hunter’s son, and Marcus and Bruno the sons of Colonus, and little Pollio the son of the sandal maker, were all there, and when they heard the trumpet they sprang to their feet. But Ruffo the captain of the guard laughed, and the others [pg 177]shouted, and Ruffo said, “By Jove, there’s Toto!”

“Diovi” was the general name for “the gods,” and when it is pronounced quickly it sounds like “Jove.” The father of the gods was “Diovis-Pater”—which in course of time became “Jupiter.”

The peddler had been in their camp in the days before the town by the river was thought of, and when he saw them, he came up the path grinning broadly, and they grinned back. They explained to the boys of the colony that he came from across the river and dealt in all sorts of things that were not made at all on this side, and some that were brought from the seashore. Toto spread out his gay cloth on the ground and began to lay out his wares.

Through long practice he knew just how to place them so that they would show most effectively, and many a customer wondered why the trinket did not look as well when he got it home as it had before he bought it. The colors in the painted cloth were combined in old, old patterns worked out according to laws as certain as the laws of music, and everywhere was the gilding that set off the colors and seemed to make them brighter and richer.