And now—even as that roar was the loudest, while Flaccus in vain strove to gain a hearing, for the third time the brazen trumpets of the centuries awoke their stirring symphonies, announcing that the hour had arrived for the tribes to commence their voting.
Those who were in the secret looked eagerly over the field. The hour had come—the leader was at their head—they waited but the signal!
That signal, named by Catiline, in the house of Læca,—the blood of Cicero!
They saw a mass of men, pressing on like a mighty wedge through the dense multitude; parting the waves of the living ocean as a stout galley parts the billows; struggling on steadily toward the knoll, whereon, amid the magnates of the land, consulars, senators, and knights, covering it with the pomp of white and crimson gowns, gemmed only by the flashing axe-heads of the lictors, stood the great Consul.
They saw the gladiators forming themselves into a sepa[pg 19]rate band, on the slopes of the Janiculum, with a senator's robe distinct among the dark gray tunics.
Catiline and his clients were not a hundred paces distant from Cicero, and the assembled nobles. They had halted! Their hands were busy in the bosom of their gowns, griping the hilts of their assassin's tools!
Cethegus and his gladiators were not a hundred paces distant from the bridge-gate of the Janiculum, and the cohort's bannered eagle.
They, too, had halted! they, too, were forming in battle order—they too were mustering their breath for the dread onset—they too were handling their war weapons!
Almost had Caius Crispus, in his mad triumph, shouted victory.
One moment, and Rome had been the prize for the winner in the gladiators' battle.