Given a little more time, a few more draughts of Sicilian wine, and all thoughts of voting for a future Cæsar would be beyond the mental power of these degenerates, and drunken quarrels would turn to violent enmity. This Caius Nepos had in mind when he took the tablets from the slaves, and threw them down with affected carelessness on the table before him.
"We cannot vote," he said loudly, "whilst Taurus Antinor is not here."
His words were even more potent than he had hoped; all that he had wanted was further delay, and most of his guests nodded approval with drunken solemnity and then called for more wine. But Hortensius Martius who, though he had drunk as heavily as the others, had not joined in the ribald songs or the senseless orgy of shouts and of laughter, now jumped up with a violent oath.
"What hath Taurus Antinor to do with us?" he shouted at the top of his voice, "or we with Taurus Antinor? Ye do not intend, I trust, to raise a freedman to the imperium and place the sceptre of Cæsar in the hands of a descendant of slaves!"
He was trembling with such unbridled fury, his eyes glowed with the lust of such deadly hate that instinctively the ribald songs and immoderate laughter were hushed, and eyes, veiled with the film of intoxication were turned wonderingly upon him.
But Caius Nepos was smiling blandly: the ire of Hortensius pleased him even though he did not understand its cause.
"Nay, as to that," he said, "are we not all descended from slaves? Taurus Antinor hath the ear of the plebs. Doth suggest, O Hortensius, that he also hath the ear of Dea Flavia Augusta?"
He had shot this arrow into the air, little guessing how hard and truly it would hit.
Hortensius was making vigorous efforts to curb his temper, biting his lips until tiny drops of blood slowly trickled down his chin. But he felt that the mocking eyes of his host were upon him, and had just a sufficiency of reason left in him to see through the machinations of Caius Nepos. He would not hold himself up to ridicule now before those who should prove his strong supporters in the future; his proposal had not yet been put to the vote, and he did not mean to alienate his adherents by an insane show of maniacal rage.
"Of that," he said in response to his host's taunt, and in a voice quivering with the mighty effort of control, "of that there is but little fear. The Augusta is too proud to look with favour on a stranger; as for me, I would sooner ask Escanes to plunge his dagger in my throat than I would serve the Empire under the Cæsarship of Taurus Antinor."