Major General Glutus Maximus rode his horse into a circus, to impress his fiancée, Aurelius Gentilitius.

Part of the Roman military elite, he went where his fancy took him,
and being particularly fond of theatrical performances, would often annoy impresarios and their audiences.

But on this occasion, alarmed by clowns and roaring lions, the nervous animal threw him onto the sawdust, where he was bitten, by a herd of panicked, performing mice.

This pathetic spectacle prompted his ‘intended’ to ride away in disgust,
for she believed it was only women who ran from a mouse, and found herself at a monastery, where she was comforted by a corpulent holy man.

Feeling trapped, between a general,
desperate for a wife and this chuckling abbot,
the young woman stroked a pet cat,
whom she felt sure was actually a lion,
but relaxed when ‘Little Luna’,
as the holy cleric had christened the feline,
scampered and played with nary a growl, 
and contrived to look suitably impressed when her ‘holy’ host boasted
he’d rescued his cuddly companion from a theatrical troupe.

Meanwhile the General had commandeered a chariot, to pursue the woman he’d expected to marry, who at that moment was supping wine with the chuckling abbot,
which she found strange in a man so ostensibly devoted to piety, and would have been amazed to learn that at night he would
gaze at the gold he’d looted, from the rich houses of Europe.

By coincidence, his most lucrative thieving activities had occurred in Hibernia,
from which detective Seamus Saffron-Steamalot had set sail, tracking the thief to his monastic lair, disguised as a cook.

‘Welcome, strange Irishman,’ quouth monk Thesalonous Theapston, ‘I like your choice of herbs,’ as he tucked into a bowl of
soup brewed by this new arrival.

‘Can you help me translate the writings of the Celtic scribe, Declán of Ardmore, as I’m struggling with the verbs?

‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon meet the boss, who’s carousing with a young lady to whom we’ve given sanctuary.’

Later that evening Saffron-Steamalot, who, like many from his island,
could play any stringed instrument with consummate skill, picked up a Roman flute and entertained Miss Aurelius, in between serving up dishes of rare quality.

Thus emboldened, she gave a display of belly dancing, a skill she’d learned on a surreptitious night out from her Cairo finishing school, but, unknown to her, General Maximus had followed her to the door
of this rowdy monastic establishment.

Famished, he helped himself to a dish of Irish stew, and, peeking into the refectory, recognised the abbot as a wanted criminal.

By lucky chance, one of the herbs used by cook Steamalot was cannabis sativa,
that confidence-boosting drug beloved of the young.

So, seeking to redeem himself, he arrested the abbot, and Aurelius vowed to love him forever.

Back in Rome, senators wondered what had happened to one of their generals,
who’d disappeared after an embarrassing incident at a circus.

One such, Gaius Cassius Longinus, took a holiday on the island of Sicilia,
where he was amused to see a woman resembling General Maximus’s fiancée,
belly-dancing in a restaurant, while the waiter looked like the abbot, who’d once inveigled himself into his villa, stealing a set of silver drinking goblets.

The latter, sensing trouble, spoke to the cook,
who sprinkled some cannabis into a pot of the
restaurant’s famed dish of Irish stew.

Then, supping a glass of wine from a silver drinking vessel, which looked vaguely familiar, he, stripping to his waist, joined in the dancing.
 
However, his antics were witnessed by an anti-Roman scribe, Cius Coningsfillocks,
who lampooned him in a song, ‘Senator Longinus is no longer pompous,
in fact he’s a belly good laugh.’

His political rivals were heard singing it as far away as Britannia, in the Roman city of Bath.

Thus, no one believed him when he came to his senses, and realised he’d discovered the lair of a notorious thief, not to mention a deserting general.

Back in Sicilia a former abbot regretted he’d been blackmailed by the young woman he’d once helped, into letting his stolen treasure be used to fund a restaurant, managed by a missing former member of the Roman military.

‘I was never suited to soldiering, and always longed to run my own business,’
the man himself had explained to the abbot after his arrest that fateful night at the monastery.

‘I’ve got my eye on a nice little eatery on the island of Sicilia.

‘You can remain a free man if you give me your stolen gold, and thus transform my life.’

‘And mine!’ Shouted Miss Aurelius, ‘I’m a dab hand in the kitchen!’

But the abbot-turned waiter learned that one cannot always escape the sins of the past,
and was dismayed when his pet lion Little Luna purred with delight at the arrival of a theatrical troupe, on that island the deserting man referred to above, closely followed by that aggrieved senator Gaius Cassius Longinus, both parties seeking revenge on a master thief.

On realising his time was up, the terrified chap ordered Little Luna to attack, but she simply licked the vengeful visitor’s face.

To compound matters, on seeing the senatorial man, the house band stuck up,
to welcome a diner who’d been so entertaining, and people flocked to watch this by now famous politician, famed in comic song, who, persuaded by Miss Aurelius, had no choice but to expose his belly.

As he watched their stomachs move as one, former General Maximus wondered,
‘Was there no limit to this woman’s flirting?

‘First a lusty abbot, with an eye for every female.

'And now a pompous politician.’

If you’re wondering what happened next, that’s another Roman tale.