ius as to who should be Caesar's successor as Pontifex
Maximus--and those distinguished statesmen found other things to think
of.

The news flew and grew. The noble senators overheard their slaves
whispering,--how it was rumoured on the street or in the Forum that
Caesar was in full advance on the city, that his cavalry were close to
the gates. Caesar at the gates! Why had they not remembered how rapidly
he could advance? Why had they trusted the assurance of the traitor
Labienus that the legions would desert their Imperator? Resist? By
what means? The walls were walls only in name; the city had long
outgrown them, spreading through a thousand breaches. There was not a
trained soldier this side of Capua, whither Pompeius had departed only
the day before to take command of the Apulian legions. Caesar was
coming! Caesar--whose tribunes the oligarchs had chased from the
Senate! Caesar--whom they had proclaimed a rebel and public enemy! He
was coming like a second Marius, who thirty-eight years before had
swept down on Rome, and taken a terrible vengeance on enemies less
bitter to him than they to the great Julian. "_Moriendum est_,"[157]
had been the only reply to every plea for mercy. And would Caesar now
be more lenient to those who had aimed to blast his honour and shed
his blood?

[157] He has got to die.

Evening drew on, but the calamity was only delayed. There was not a
soldier to confront the invader. Few men that night could sleep. Rich
and poor alike, all trembled. To their imaginations their foe was an
ogre, implacable, unsparing. "Remember how it was in Sulla's day,"
croaked Laeca to Ahenobarbus. "Remember how he proscribed forty
senators and sixteen hundred equites with one stroke. A fine example
for Caesar! And Drusus, who is with the rebels, is little likely to say
a good word in your behalf, eh?"

"The gods blast your tongue!" cried the young man, wringing his hands
in terror; for that Drusus would ruin him, if he gained the chance,
Lucius had not the least doubt in the world.

So passed the night, in fear and panic. When morning came everything
save flight seemed suicide. There was a great government treasure in
the Temple of Saturn. The Senate had voted that the money be delivered
to Pompeius. But the consuls were too demoralized to take away a
denarius. They left the great hoard under mere lock and key--a present
to their bitterest enemy. Then began the great exodus. Hardly a man
had done more t