The Roman Traitor, Vol. 2

by Henry William Herbert

Nor had this been their only difficulty, for they had been compelled to avoid all the villages and scattered farm houses, which lay on their route, in the fear that Julia's outcries and resistance—for she frequently succeeded in removing the bandage from her mouth—would awaken suspicion and cause their arrest, while in the immediate vicinity of Rome.

At one time, the party had been within a very few miles of the city, passing over the Tiber, scarce five miles above the Mulvian bridge, about an hour before the arrest of the ambassadors; and it was from this point, that Aulus sent[pg 114] off his messenger to Lentulus, announcing his success, thereby directly disobeying the commands of Catiline, who had enjoined it on him almost with his last words, to communicate this enterprise to none of his colleagues in guilt.

Crossing the Flaminian, or great northern road, they had found a relay of fresh horses, stationed in a little grove, of which by this time they stood greatly in need, and striking across the country, at length reached the Cassian road, near the little river Galera, just as the sun rose above the eastern hills.

At this moment they had not actually effected above ten miles of their journey, as reckoned from the gates of Rome to the camp of Catiline, which was nearly two hundred miles distant, though they had traversed nearly forty during the night, in their wearisome but unavoidable circuit.

They were, however, admirably mounted on fresh horses, and had procured a cisium, or light carriage for two persons, not much unlike in form to a light gig, in which they had placed the unhappy Julia, with a slight boy, the son of Caius Crispus, as the driver.

By threats of the most atrocious nature, they had at length succeeded in compelling her to temporary silence. Death she had not only despised, but implored, even when the point of their daggers were razing the skin of her soft neck; and so terribly were they embarrassed and exasperated by her persistence, that it is probable they would have taken her life, had it not been for fear of Catiline, whose orders were express to bring her to his camp alive and in honor.

At length Aulus Fulvius had threatened in the plainest language outrages so enormous, that the poor girl's spirit sank, and that she took an oath, in order to avoid immediate indignities, and those the most atrocious, to remain silent during the next six hours.

Had she been able to possess herself of any weapon, she would undoubtedly have destroyed herself, as the only means she could imagine of escaping what to her was worse than loss of life, the loss of honor; and it was chiefly in the hope of effecting this ere nightfall, that she took the oath prescribed to her, in terms of such tremendous sanctity, that no Roman would dream of breaking it, on any pretext of compulsion.

Liberated by their success in this atrocious scheme, from that apprehension, they now pushed forward rapidly, and reached the station at Baccanæ, in a wooded gorge between a range of low hills, and a clear lake, at about nine in the morning, of our time, or the third hour by Roman computation.

Here they obtained a fresh horse for the vehicle which carried Julia, and tarrying so long only as to swallow a draught of wine, they pressed onward through a steep defile along which the road wound among wooded crags toward Sutrium.