"Constantinus is dead! You must represent him."
"I represent Belisarius," said Cethegus proudly. "Take five hundred Armenians from the Appian Gate, and send them to the Porta Portuensis."
"Help--help for the Appian Gate! All the men on the ramparts are shot dead!" cried a Persian horseman, galloping up. "The farthest outwork is nearly lost; it may yet be saved, but with difficulty. It would be impossible to retake it!"
Cethegus called his young jurisconsult, Salvius Julianus, now his war-tribune.
"Up, my jurist! 'Beati possidentes!' Take a hundred legionaries and keep the outwork at all costs until further assistance arrive." And again he looked over the breastwork.
Under his feet the fight raged; the battering-rams thundered. But he was more troubled by the mysterious inaction which the King preserved in the background than by the turmoil close at hand.
"Of what can he be thinking?"
Just then a fearful crash and a loud shout of joy from the barbarians sounded from below. Cethegus had no need to ask what it was; in a moment he had reached the gate.
"The gate is broken!" cried his people.
"I know it. We now must be the bolts of Rome!"