He was as skilful in negotiation and persuasion as he was in battle.  The struggle that ensued was fierce, but brief; and nearly all the towns and legions that had been guilty of defection returned to their Roman allegiance.  Civilis, though not more than half vanquished, himself asked leave to surrender.  The Batavian might, as was said at the time, have inundated the country, and drowned the Roman armies.  Vespasian, therefore, not being inclined to drive men or matters to extremity, gave Civilis leave to go into retirement and live in peace amongst the marshes of his own land.  The Gallic chieftains alone, the projectors of a Gallic empire, were rigorously pursued and chastised.  There was especially one, Julius Sabinus, the pretended descendant of Julius Caesar, whose capture was heartily desired.  After the ruin of his hopes he took refuge in some vaults connected with one of his country houses.  The way in was known only to two devoted freedmen of his, who set fire to the buildings, and spread a report that Sabinus had poisoned himself, and that his dead body had been devoured by the flames.  He had a wife, a young Gaul named Eponina, who was in frantic despair at the rumor; but he had her informed, by the mouth of one of his freedmen, of his place of concealment, begging her at the same time to keep up a show of widowhood and mourning, in order to confirm the report already in circulation.  “Well did she play her part,” to use Plutarch’s expression, “in her tragedy of woe.”  She went at night to visit her husband in his retreat, and departed at break of day; and at last would not depart at all.  At the end of seven months, hearing great talk of Vespasian’s clemency, she set out for Rome, taking with her her husband, disguised as a slave, with shaven head and a dress that made him unrecognizable.  But the friends who were in their confidence advised them not to risk as yet the chance of imperial clemency, and to return to their secret asylum.  There they lived for nine years, during which “as a lioness in her den, neither more nor less,” says Plutarch, “Eponina gave birth to two young whelps, and suckled them herself at her teat.”  At last they were discovered and brought before Vespasian at Rome:  “Caesar,” said Eponina, showing him her children, “I conceived them and suckled them in a tomb, that there might be more of us to ask thy mercy.”

[Illustration:  Eponina and Sabinus hidden in a Vault——­97]

But Vespasian was merciful only from prudence, and not by nature or from magnanimity; and he sent Sabinus to execution.  Eponina asked that she might die with her husband, saying, “Caesar, do me this grace; for I have lived more happily beneath the earth and in the darkness than thou in the splendor of thy empire.”  Vespasian fulfilled her desire by sending her also to execution; and Plutarch, their contemporary, undoubtedly expressed the general feeling, when he ended his tale with the words, “In all the long reign of this emperor there was no deed so cruel or so piteous to see; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a short time all his posterity was extinct.”