full speed with his hands clasped behind his back,—­these were the mere external traits that made him wonderful among men.  Worthy of all praise was the discipline by which the Imperator had held his troops to him by bonds firmer than iron; neither noticing all petty transgressions, nor punishing according to a rigid rule; swift and sure to apprehend mutineers and deserters; certain to relax the tight bands of discipline after a hard-fought battle with the genial remark that “his soldiers fought none the worse for being well oiled “; ever treating the troops as comrades, and addressing them as “fellow-soldiers,” as if they were but sharers with him in the honour of struggling for a single great end.  Drusus had known him to ride one hundred miles a day in a light chariot without baggage, march continually at the head of his legions on foot, sharing their fatigues in the most malignant weather, swim a swollen river on a float of inflated skins, always travelling faster than the news of his coming might fly before him.  Tireless, unsleeping, all providing, all accomplishing, omniscient,—­this was what made Drusus look upon his general as a being raised up by the Fates, to go up and down the world, destroying here and building there.  The immediate future might be sombre enough, with all the military advantages falling, one after another, into Pompeius’s lap; but doubt the ultimate triumph of Caesar?  The young Livian would have as readily questioned his own existence.

Some one thrust back the flaps of the tent, and called inside into the darkness:—­

“Are you here, Drusus?”

“I am,” was the wearied answer.  “Is that Antonius?”

“Yes.  Come out.  We may as well dispose of our cold puls before the moon rises, and while we can imagine it peacocks, Lucrine oysters, or what not.”

“If sight were the only sense!” grumbled Drusus, as he pulled himself together by a considerable effort, and staggered to his feet.

Outside the tent Antonius was waiting with a helmet half full of the delectable viand, which the two friends proceeded to share together as equally as they might in the increasing darkness.

“You are over sober to-night,” said Antonius, when this scarcely elaborate meal was nearly finished.

“Perpol!” replied Drusus, “have I been as a rule drunken of late?  My throat hardly knows the feeling of good Falernian, it is so long since I have tasted any.”

“I doubt if there is so much as a draught of posca[176] in the army,” said Antonius, yawning.  “I imagine that among our friends, the Pompeians, there is plenty, and more to spare. Mehercle, I feel that we must storm their camp just to get something worth drinking.  But I would stake my best villa that you have not been so gloomy for mere lack of victuals, unless you have just joined the Pythagoreans, and have taken a vow not to eat fish or beans.”

  [176] A drink of vinegar and water very common among the soldiers.