“A bandit, my excellent friend,” was his answer, “but not a common one; no ordinary footpad could strip the noble Servius Flaccus without a harder struggle.”

Servius burst into lamentations.

“My box of unguents!  My precious rings!  My money-bag!  You are not leaving me one valuable!  Have you sunk as low as this?”

“Really,” returned the robber, “I have no time to convince you that the brigand’s life is the only one worth living.  You do not care to join our illustrious brotherhood?  No?  Well, I must put these trinkets and fat little wallet in my own wagon.  I leave you your cloak out of old friendship’s sake.  Really you must not blame me.  Remember Euripides’s line:—­

  “‘Money can warp the judgment of a God.’

Thus I err in good company.  And with this, vale!”

Flaccus was left with his menials to clamber back into his plundered carriage.  Gabinius drove his horse at topmost speed, and before morning was saluted by the remainder of the banditti, near their mountain stronghold.  Dumnorix met him with news.

“It is rumoured in the country towns that Caesar is driving all before him in the north, and will be down on Rome in less days than I have fingers.”

Gabinius clapped his hands.

“And we will be down on Rome, and away from it, before a legionary shows himself at the gates!”

Chapter XVIII

How Pompeius Stamped with His Feet

I

A messenger to the consuls!  He had ridden fast and furious, his horse was flecked with foam and straining on his last burst of speed.  On over the Mulvian Bridge he thundered; on across the Campus Martius; on to the Porta Ratumena—­with all the hucksters and street rabble howling and chasing at his heels.

“News!  News for the consuls!”

“What news?” howled old Laeca, who was never backward in a street press.

“Terrible!” shouted the messenger, drawing rein, “Caesar is sweeping all before him!  All Thermus’s troops have deserted him at Iguvium.  Attius Varus has evacuated Auximum, and his troops too have dispersed, or joined Caesar.  All the towns are declaring for the enemy. Vah! He will be here in a few days at most!  I am the last of the relay with the news.  I have hardly breathed from Eretum!”

And the courier plunged the spur into his hard-driven mount, and forced his way into the city, through the mob.  “Caesar advancing on Rome!” The Jewish pedlers took up the tale, and carried it to the remotest tenement houses of Janiculum.  The lazy street-idlers shouted it shrilly.  Laeca, catching sight of Lucius Ahenobarbus, just back from Baiae, and a little knot of kindred spirits about him, was in an instant pouring it all in their ears.  The news spread, flew, grew.  The bankers on the Via Sacra closed their credit books, raised their