instead of lying down and dying, dashed into the temple,
dripping blood upon the pavement as it went, and at last fell and expired
just before the sacred _adytum_. In despair the people took to
fortune-telling and its attendant arts. Old crones were found in plenty
with their strange rites, the stranger the more welcome. Trenches were dug
in by-places for sacrifices to the infernal gods; amulets, rings,
counters, tablets, pebbles, nails, bones, feathers, Ephesian or Egyptian
legends, were in request, and raised the hopes, or beguiled and occupied
the thoughts, of those who else would have been directly dwelling on their
sufferings, present or in prospect.

Others were occupied, whether they would or no, with diversions fiercer
and more earnest. There were continual altercations between farmers, small
proprietors of land, government and city officials,--altercations so
manifold and violent, that, even were there no hubbub of voices, and no
incoherence of wrath and fear to complicate them, we should despair of
setting them before the reader. An officer from the camp was expostulating
with one of the municipal authorities that no corn had been sent thither
for the last six or seven days, and the functionary attacked had thrown
the blame on the farmer, and he in turn had protested that he could not
get cattle to bring the waggons into Sicca; those which he had set out
with had died of exhaustion on the journey. A clerk, as we now speak, in
the _Officium_ of the society of publicans or collectors of _annona_ was
threatening a number of small tenants with ejection for not sending in
their rated portion of corn for the Roman people:--the _Officium_ of the
_Notarius_, or assistant prefect, had written up to Sicca from Carthage in
violent terms; and come it must, though the locusts had eaten up every
stack and granary. A number of half-starved peasants had been summoned for
payment of their taxes, and in spite of their ignorance of Latin, they had
been made to understand that death was the stern penalty of neglecting to
bring the coin. They, on the other hand, by their fierce doggedness of
manner, seemed to signify by way of answer that death was not a penalty,
unless life was a boon.

The _villicus_ of one of the decurions, who had an estate in the
neighbourhood, was laying his miseries before the man of business of his
employer. "What are we to do?" he said. "Half the gang of slaves is dead,
and the other half is so feeble, th