It seemed hours—almost days—that he stood there, grave and silent, looking down into the sea of upturned faces, while the roar of the multitude died away into a gentle murmur, and then into a silence so oppressive that each man seemed to be holding his breath. Once the magistrate's lips moved, but no words came from them, and strange noises, as of the clenching of teeth and sharp, quick breathing, rose all about. Then a voice came from his mouth, the very calmness of which seemed terrible:—
"Quirites, we have been beaten in a great battle. Our army is destroyed, and Caius Flaminius, the consul, is killed."
For a moment there was stillness deeper almost than before, as if the leadlike words were sinking slowly but steadily along passage and nerve down to the central seats of consciousness; then burst forth a sound as of a single groan—the groan of Jupiter himself in mortal anguish; and then the noise of women weeping, the shrieking treble of age, and the rumbling murmur of curses and execrations,—against senate and nobles, against the rabble and their dead leader, but, above all, against Carthage and her terrible captain.
"Who are these men that slay consuls and destroy armies?" piped the shrill voice of an aged cripple who had struggled up from where he sat upon the steps of Castor, and was shaking the stump of a wrist toward the north.
"Are they not the men who surrendered Sicily that we might let them escape from us at Eryx? Did they not give up their ships, and pay us tribute, and scurry out of Sardinia that Rome might spare them? I—I who am talking to you have seen their armies: naked barbarians from the deserts, naked barbarians from the woods—not one well-armed man in five—a rabble with a score of languages, to whom no general can talk. They to destroy the army of Rome—in her own land!—what crime have we committed that the gods should deal with us thus?"
"But the great beasts that tear up the ranks?" put in a young butcher, one of the circle that had been drawn together about the veteran.
"How did his elephants save Pyrrhus—and then we saw them for the first time?" retorted the cripple.
"You forget, that was before Rome had become the prey of demagogues; before she had Flaminii for consuls."
All turned toward the new speaker—the young patrician whom his companion had called Lucius. He was a man perhaps twenty-five years of age, of middle height, sparely built but as if of tempered steel, with strong, commanding features and dark hawklike eyes that were now glittering with passion. It was not a handsome face except so far as strength and pride make masculine beauty, but it was the face of one whom a man might trust and a woman love.
The butcher was on the point of returning an angry retort, half to hide his awe of the other's rank, when a friend caught him by the arm.