I.
NEWS.
"A troop of pipe-players to Minerva on the Ides of June, if we win!"
"And my household to Mars, if we have lost!"
The speakers were hurrying along the street that leads down from thePalatine Hill toward the Forum, and both were young. Their high shoesfastened with quadruple thongs and adorned with small silver crescentsproclaimed their patrician rank.
"Why do you vow as if the gods had already passed judgment, Lucius?"
"Because, my Caius, I am very sure that a battle has been fought. Whatelse do these rumours mean that are flying through the city? rumoursthat none can trace to a source. It is only a few minutes, since myfreedman, Atius, told me how the slaves report that our neighbourMarcus Sabrius rode in last night through the Ratumenian Gate; and whenI sent to his house to inquire, the doorkeeper feigned ignorance. Thatis only one of a hundred tales. Note the crowd thickening around us aswe approach the Forum, and how all are pressing in the same direction.Study their faces, and doubt what I say if you can."
"But is it victory or defeat?"
"Answer me your own question, Caius. Is 'victory' or 'defeat' the wordthat men do not dare to utter?"
The face of Caius became grave. Then suddenly he burst out with:--
"You are right. I see it all now, even as you speak; and what hope hadwe from the first? Who was the demagogue Flaminius that he shouldcommand our army, going forth without the auspices--a consul that wasno consul at all in the sight of the gods! Then, too, there were thewarnings that poured in from all the country: the ships in the sky, thecrow alighting on the couch in the Temple of Juno, the stones rained inPicinum--"
"Foolish stories, my Caius; the dreams of ignorant rustics," repliedLucius, smiling faintly. "Besides, you remember they were allexpiated--"
"And who knows that they were expiated truly!" croaked an old womanfrom a booth by the road. "Who does not know that, as Varro says, yourpatrician magistrates would rather lose a battle than that a plebeianconsul should triumph! Varbo, the butcher, dreamed last night that hisson's blood was drenching his bed, and when he awoke, it was water fromthe roof; and Arates, the Greek soothsayer, says that Varbo's son hasbeen slain in the water, and his blood--"
But the young patricians, who had halted a moment at the interruption,now hurried on with an expression of contempt on their faces.
"That is what Flaminius stands for," resumed Lucius after a moment ofsilence. "How can we look for success when such men are raised to thecommand, merely because they _are_ such men; and when a Fabius and aClaudius are set aside because their fathers' fathers led the armies ofthe Republic to victory in the days when this rabble were the slavesthey should still be."
The friends had turned into the Sacred Way. A moment later theyarrived at the Forum lined with its rows of booths nestled away beneathmassive porticoes of peperino, and with its columned temples standinglike divine sentinels about or sweeping away up the rugged slope of theCapitoline to where the great fane of Jupiter Capitolinus shed itsprotecting glory over the destinies of Rome.
Below, the broad expanse of Forum and Comitia was thronged with asurging crowd--patricians and plebeians,--elbowing and pushing oneanother in mad efforts to get closer to the Rostra and to a small groupof magistrates, who, with grave faces, were clustered at the foot ofits steps. These latter spoke to each other in whispers, but such ababel of sounds swelled up around them that they might safely havescreamed without fear of being overheard.
The booths were emptied of their cooks and butchers and silversmiths.Waving arms and the flutter of robes emphasized the discussions goingon on every side. Here a rumour-monger was telling his tale to agaping cluster of pallid faces; there a plebeian pot-house orator wasarraigning the upper classes to a circle of lowering brows and clenchedfists, while the sneering face of some passing patrician told of adisdain beyond words, as he gathered his toga closer to avoid thecontamination of the rabble.
One sentiment, however, seemed to prevail over all, and, beside it,curiosity, party rancour, wrath, and contempt were as nothing. It wasanxiety sharpened even into dread that brooded everywhere andcontrolled all other passions, while itself threatening at every momentto sweep away the barriers and to loose the warm southern blood of thecitizens into a seething flood of furious riot or headlong panic.
The two young men had descended into this maelstrom of popularexcitement, and were making such headway as they could toward thecentral point of interest. Now and again they passed friends whoeither looked straight into their faces, without a sign of recognition,or else burst out into floods of information,--prayers for news orvouchsafings of it,--news, good or bad, true or false. Perhapsthree-fourths of the distance had been covered at the expense of torntogas and bruised sides, when a sudden commotion in front showed thatsomething was happening. The next moment the hard, stern face ofMarcus Pomponius Matho, the praetor peregrinus, rose above the crowd,and then the broad purple band upon his toga, as he mounted the stepsof the Rostra.
It seemed hours--almost days--that he stood there, grave and silent,looking down into the sea of upturned faces, while the roar of themultitude died away into a gentle murmur, and then into a silence sooppressive that each man seemed to be holding his breath. Once themagistrate's lips moved, but no words came from them, and strangenoises, as of the clenching of teeth and sharp, quick breathing, roseall about. Then a voice came from his mouth, the very calmness ofwhich seemed terrible:--
"Quirites, we have been beaten in a great battle. Our army isdestroyed, and Caius Flaminius, the consul, is killed."
For a moment there was stillness deeper almost than before, as if theleadlike words were sinking slowly but steadily along passage and nervedown to the central seats of consciousness; then burst forth a sound asof a single groan--the groan of Jupiter himself in mortal anguish; andthen the noise of women weeping, the shrieking treble of age, and therumbling murmur of curses and execrations,--against senate and nobles,against the rabble and their dead leader, but, above all, againstCarthage and her terrible captain.
"Who are these men that slay consuls and destroy armies?" piped theshrill voice of an aged cripple who had struggled up from where he satupon the steps of Castor, and was shaking the stump of a wrist towardthe north.
"Are they not the men who surrendered Sicily that we might let themescape from us at Eryx? Did they not give up their ships, and pay ustribute, and scurry out of Sardinia that Rome might spare them? I--Iwho am talking to you have seen their armies: naked barbarians from thedeserts, naked barbarians from the woods--not one well-armed man infive--a rabble with a score of languages, to whom no general can talk._They_ to destroy the army of Rome--in her own land!--what crime havewe committed that the gods should deal with us thus?"
"But the great beasts that tear up the ranks?" put in a young butcher,one of the circle that had been drawn together about the veteran.
"How did his elephants save Pyrrhus--and then we saw them for the firsttime?" retorted the cripple.
"You forget, that was before Rome had become the prey of demagogues;before she had Flaminii for consuls."
All turned toward the new speaker--the young patrician whom hiscompanion had called Lucius. He was a man perhaps twenty-five years ofage, of middle height, sparely built but as if of tempered steel, withstrong, commanding features and dark hawklike eyes that were nowglittering with passion. It was not a handsome face except so far asstrength and pride make masculine beauty, but it was the face of onewhom a man might trust and a woman love.
The butcher was on the point of returning an angry retort, half to hidehis awe of the other's rank, when a friend caught him by the arm.
"Do you not see it is Lucius Sergius Fidenas?" he whispered.
The result of the warning was still doubtful, when a sudden commotionin the crowd about them drew the attention of all to a short, thick-setman of middle age, in the light panoply of a mounted legionary. Crieswent up from all about:--
"It
is Marcus Decius." "He is from the army." "Tell us! what news?"
For answer the newcomer turned from one to the other of hisquestioners, with a dazed expression on his pale, drawn face.
"What shall I say, neighbours?" he muttered at last. "My horse felljust out there on the Flaminian road, and I came here on foot. I haveeaten nothing for a day."
But they paid no attention to his wants, thronging around with almostthreatening gestures and crying:--
"What news? What news--not of yourself--of the army?--of the battle?"
"There was no battle, and there is no army," said the man, dully.
Sergius forced his way to the front and threw one arm about thesoldier. Then, turning to the crowd:--
"Stand back!" he cried, "and give him air. Do you not see the fellowis fainting?"
"No battle--and yet no army," repeated Decius, in a murmurous monotone,when, for a moment, there were silence and space around him. "Wemarched by the Lake Trasimenus, and the fog lay thick upon us. Thencame a noise of shouts and clash of arms and shrieks, but we sawnothing--only sometimes a great, white, naked body swinging a hugesword, and again a black man buried in his horse's mane that wavedabout him as he rushed by--only these things and our own menfalling--falling without ever a chance to strike or to see whence wewere stricken."
The crowd shuddered.
"And the elephants?"
"I did not see them. They say they are all dead."
"And the consul?"
"I do not know."
Just then the cripple from the steps was pushed forward.
"Flaminius is dead. He died fighting, as a Roman consul should. Butyou? What are you, to let the pulse-eaters at him. You should haveseen how _we_ dealt with them off the Aegusian Islands."
"Or at Drepana?" sneered the horseman, roused from his lethargy by theother's taunt.
"That was what a _patrician_ consul brought us to," muttered thecripple, glancing at Sergius. "Do you know what the Claudian did?When the sacred chickens would not eat, he cried out, 'Then they shalldrink,' and ordered them thrown overboard. How could soldiers win whenan impious commander had first challenged the gods?"
"And what about Flaminius ordering our standards to be dug up when theycould not be drawn from the earth?" retorted the other.
"Did he do that?" asked several, and for a moment the feeling that hadbeen with the cripple, and against the victim of this latest disaster,seemed divided.
Sergius perceived only too clearly that, in the present temper of men'sminds, the faintest spark could light fires of riot and murder thatmight leave but a heap of ashes and corpses for the Carthaginian togain. Taking advantage of the momentary lull, he said in conciliatorytones:--
"Flaminius neglected the auspices, and disaster came upon us for hisimpiety, but it appears that he died like a brave soldier, and he is awhip-knave who strikes at such. As for this man, he needs succour andcare. Stand aside, then, that I may take him where his wants may beministered to. There will soon be plenty of fugitives to fill yourears with tales."
"Not many, master, not many," murmured Decius, as the young man forceda way for them through the crowd. "Some are taken, but most lie in thedefile of Trasimenus or under the waters of the Lake."
Sergius hurried on, thinking of Varbo the butcher's dream, and ofArates the Greek soothsayer's interpretation.
The Lion's Brood Page 2