had flashed against her gates!  The war had been of their making; to send Caesar into outlawry the aristocracy had laboured ten long years.  And now the noble lords were exiles, wanderers among the nations.  To Capua they went, to find small comfort there, and thence to join Pompeius in further flight beyond the seas to Greece.  But we anticipate.  Enough that neither Lentulus Crus, nor Domitius, nor Cato, nor the great Magnus himself, ever saw Rome again.

II

Agias stood in a shop by the Sacred Way watching the stream of fugitives pouring down toward the Porta Capena.  At his side was a person whom a glance proclaimed to be a fellow-Greek.  The stranger was perhaps fifty, his frame presented a faultless picture of symmetry and manly vigour, great of stature, the limbs large but not ungainly.  His features were regular, but possessed just enough prominence to make them free from the least tinge of weakness.  The Greek’s long, thick, dark but grey-streaked beard streamed down upon his breast; his hair, of similar hue, was long, and tossed back over his shoulders in loose curls.  His dress was rich, yet rude, his chiton and cloak short, but of choice Milesian wool and dyed scarlet and purple; around his neck dangled a very heavy gold chain set with conspicuously blazing jewels.  The ankles, however, were bare, and the sandals of the slightest and meanest description.  The stranger must once have been of a light, not to say fair, complexion; but cheeks, throat, arms, and feet were all deeply bronzed, evidently by prolonged exposure to wind and weather.  Agias and his companion watched the throng of panic-struck exiles.  The younger Greek was pointing out, with the complacency of familiar knowledge, the names and dignities of the illustrious fugitives.

“Yonder goes Cato,” he was saying; “mark his bitter scowl!  There goes Marcus Marcellus, the consular.  There drives the chariot of Lucius Domitius, Caesar’s great enemy.”  And Agias stopped, for his friend had seized his arm with a sudden grasp, crushing as iron.  “Why, by all the gods, Demetrius, why are you staring at him that way?”

“By Zeus!” muttered the other, “if I had only my sword!  It would be easy to stab him, and then escape in this crowd!”

“Stab him!” cried Agias.  “Demetrius, good cousin, control yourself.  You are not on the deck of your trireme, with all your men about you.  Why should you be thus sanguinary, when you see Lucius Domitius?  Why hate him more than any other Roman?”

The consular, unaware of the threat against him, but with a compelling fear of Caesar’s Gallic cavalry lending strength to the arm with which he plied the whip—­for the law against driving inside the city no man respected that day—­whirled out of sight.

Demetrius still strained at his cousin’s arm.