The Capuan shifted uneasily and looked down. Several of the soldiers had already lifted Perolla to his feet, and, holding him upright, had torn away what remained of his garments; others sent for the executioners, and, in a moment, these appeared with the instruments of their calling.
It was doubtful whether the prisoner had recovered full consciousness when the first rod fell upon his shoulders, but he groaned and writhed slightly in the grasp of the four soldiers who held him extended upon the pavement.
Then Hannibal turned away, ordering one of his officers to remain and see the end. He signed to the Capuans to follow him.
"Such jackals, my fathers, are not worthy that men of rank and wealth should watch them die," he said lightly. "The rabble will provide him with sufficient audience."
And the senators, with awed and thoughtful faces, followed in the train of the captain-general of Carthage.
VIII.
DIPLOMACY.
Pacuvius Calavius sat in the atrium of his house. Black robed from head to foot, with hair and beard untrimmed and uncombed, and face and hands foul with dirt, he rocked to and fro and groaned. From time to time he ran his fingers through beard and hair, and uttered the measured cry of the Greek mourners.
An hour before, one of the senators had stolen furtively in, and, having hurriedly related the grewsome scene just enacted in the Forum, had sneaked out again as if he were a spy passing through hostile lines. None other of the friends of the afflicted father had ventured to bear or send a message of condolence. It was as if the house of the once acknowledged leader had been marked for the pestilence—and no pestilence was more to be shunned than the deadly blight of broken power. Even the slaves shifted about in embarrassed silence, offered little service, and obeyed as if conscious that obedience was something of an indiscretion, and was liable at any moment to become a crime. Some had slipped away to their quarters, and had begun to discuss the relative possibilities of freedom, wholesale execution, or a new master, when the coming blow should fall upon this one.