But the Tribune, with frowning brow, cried: "Such speeches drive away the goddess of victory and summon the avenger of foolhardiness. Jeer after we have conquered--and even then, it is wiser not to do it. Nemesis sleeps lightly."
"If you cannot discover where the Barbarians are hiding, what will you do?"
"Seek them until I do find them and bring them to a halt."
"But then," cried Herculanus, "let there be no treaties, no mercy, nothing save extermination. How often these faithless people have broken the peace! Our legions are full of fury against the Barbarians who, year after year, compel them to march through these horrible marshy forests. Only the extirpation of the last German will give peace to the Roman Empire." He clenched his fist threateningly.
"You have perhaps uttered words of prophecy," said Saturninus thoughtfully, "but in a different sense from what you intended."
"He has uttered abominable words!" cried Ausonius, filling his goblet. "And they are utterly groundless. Ay, more than a century ago it looked as if the Persians and Germans under Gallienus would flood the Eastern and the Western Empire. But since that time Eternal Rome has grown young once more. Your brave countrymen, my Saturninus, the heroic Illyrian emperors, have curbed the barbarians on the Euphrates, the Rhine, and the Ister. Diocletian has remodelled the internal affairs of the Empire; and so I might adapt to Rome's mastery of the world the proud words of my colleague Horace: 'He did not lack talent, but he possessed little learning.'"
"Do they belong to poetry?" asked Saturninus doubtfully.
But the eager speaker, without hearing his words, continued: "What he said concerning the permanence and spread of his own renown I will apply to the glory of Rome: it will increase and grow, so long as the priest ascends the hill to the Capitol with the silent Virgin. The Vestal," he added in explanation.
"H'm," observed the Illyrian, "only it's a pity that the hypothesis is no longer apt."
"What? How so?"