“Ah, ha! my fine Furcifer,"[45] cried Alfidius, when this work was completed.  “How do you find yourself?”

  [45] Furca-bearer, a coarse epithet.

“Do you mock at me, you ’three letter man’?” retorted Agias in grim despair, referring cuttingly to FVR[46] branded on Alfidius’s forehead.

  [46] Thief.  Branding was a common punishment for slaves.

“So you sing, my pretty bird,” laughed the executioner.  “I think you will croak sorrowfully enough before long.  Call me ‘man of letters’ if you will; to-night the dogs tear that soft skin of yours, while my hide is sound.  Now off for the Porta Esquilina!  Trot along with you!” and he swung his lash over the wretched boy’s shoulders.

Agias was led out into the street.  He was too pained and numbed to groan, resist, or even think and fear.  The thongs might well have been said to press his mind as much as his skin.

Chapter III

The Privilege of a Vestal

I

Drusus started long before daybreak on his journey to Rome; with him went Cappadox, his ever faithful body-servant, and Pausanias, the amiable and cultivated freedman who had been at his elbow ever since he had visited Athens.  For a while the young master dozed in his carriage; but, as they whirled over mile after mile of the Campagna, the sun arose; then, when sleep left him, the Roman was all alive to the patriotic reminiscences each scene suggested.  Yonder to the far south lay Alba, the old home of the Latins, and a little southward too was the Lake of Regillus, where tradition had it the free Romans won their first victory, and founded the greatness of the Republic.  Along the line of the Anio, a few miles north, had marched Hannibal on his mad dash against Rome to save the doomed Capua.  And these pictures of brave days, and many another vision like them, welled up in Drusus’s mind, and the remembrance of the marble temples of the Greek cities faded from his memory; for, as he told himself, Rome was built of nobler stuff than marble;—­she was built of the deeds of men strong and brave, and masters of every hostile fate.  And he rejoiced that he could be a Roman, and share in his country’s deathless fame, perhaps could win for her new honour,—­could be consul, triumphator, and lead his applauding legions up to the temple of Capitoline Jove—­another national glory added to so many.

So the vision of the great city of tall ugly tenement houses, basking on her “Seven Hills,” which only on their summits showed the nobler temples or the dwellings of the great patricians, broke upon him.  And it was with eyes a-sparkle with enthusiasm, and a light heart, that he reached the Porta Esquilina, left the carriage for a litter borne by four stout Syrians sent out from the house of his late uncle, and was carried soon into the hubbub of the city streets.