ord and shield, and
when he struck the long pikes of the first square, it was with the
force of half a dozen broken maniples welded into a solid mass.

Still the sarissas held firm. Perhaps two lines went down, but the
pila rained their slant courses from the rear; the feeble rush was
stopped, and the legionaries struggled helplessly upon the spears.
Sergius saw nothing but the dark, bearded face among the
squares--scarcely nearer than before. Had he not read in a little book
written by one, Xenophon, a Greek, and purchased, at great cost, at the
shop of Milo, the bookseller in the Argiletum, how Oriental armies won
or lost by the life or death of their leaders? He would kill Hannibal!
Would to the gods that Paullus had fallen in the Cinctus Gabinus!
Paullus, too much of an infidel to think of such old-time immolation;
but there was yet one last appeal.

Seizing the tough staff of the standard almost at the end, he whirled
it around his head and let it go at full swing; the silver eagle
flashed in the light of the setting sun, as it described great arcs,
and plunged down amid the hostile ranks; a hoarse cry went up: the very
deity of the legion was amid its foes! no Roman so untried as not to
hear its call. The short swords hacked and stabbed among the spears;
the first square swayed and rocked, shivered into fragments, and,
hurled back upon the second, bore it, too, down in the mingled rush of
pursuers and pursued. On every side of the dwindling band of
assailants, front, flanks, and rear, the pikes dipped and plunged, the
Gallic swords hissed through the air, the Spaniards ravened and
stabbed; but, to the Romans, flanks and rear were nothing: it was the
front, the Libyans, the lost eagle.

And now, at last, it was won; the advance had been checked by the
closer welding of the syntagmata, half his men were down; but Sergius,
still unhurt, had stooped and raised the standard, kissing its crimson
beak and wings. Then he looked up.

Half the space between himself and the bearded horseman had vanished,
and the latter was no longer talking carelessly with those about. His
steady gaze was fixed upon the young Roman, as if studying the exact
measure of strength that remained to him. There was nothing else for
it. Again the great staff described great circles through the air, and
again the crimson eagle soared and stooped, and the white stallion
reared and snorted, as it struck the earth before him; again the
sha