nities, listened, smiling and growing pale. At the end of the song
Petronius gave directions to serve more wine and food; then he conversed
with the guests sitting near him of trifling but pleasant things, such
as are mentioned usually at feasts. Finally, he called to the Greek to
bind his arm for a moment; for he said that sleep was tormenting him,
and he wanted to yield himself to Hypnos before Thanatos put him to
sleep forever.

In fact, he fell asleep. When he woke, the head of Eunice was lying on
his breast like a white flower. He placed it on the pillow to look at it
once more. After that his veins were opened again.

At his signal the singers raised the song of Anacreon anew, and the
citharae accompanied them so softly as not to drown a word. Petronius
grew paler and paler; but when the last sound had ceased, he turned to
his guests again and said,

"Friends, confess that with us perishes--"

But he had not power to finish; his arm with its last movement embraced
Eunice, his head fell on the pillow, and he died.

The guests looking at those two white forms, which resembled two
wonderful statues, understood well that with them perished all that was
left to their world at that time,--poetry and beauty.

EPILOGUE

AT first the revolt of the Gallic legions under Vindex did not seem very
serious. Caesar was only in his thirty-first year, and no one was bold
enough to hope that the world could be freed so soon from the nightmare
which was stifling it. Men remembered that revolts had occurred
more than once among the legions,--they had occurred in previous
reigns,--revolts, however, which passed without involving a change of
government; as during the reign of Tiberius, Drusus put down the
revolt of the Pannonian legions. "Who," said the people, "can take the
government after Nero, since all the descendants of the divine Augustus
have perished?" Others, looking at the Colossus, imagined him a
Hercules, and thought that no force could break such power. There were
those even who since he went to Achaea were sorry for him, because
Helius and Polythetes, to whom he left the government of Rome and Italy,
governed more murderously than he had.

No one was sure of life or property. Law ceased to protect. Human
dignity and virtue had perished, family bonds existed no longer, and
degraded hearts did not even dare to admit hope. From Greece came
accounts of the incomparable triumphs of Caesar, of the thousands of