Yet Sophronia did kiss her, and at the same instant Ævius entered with the guards who accompanied him.
"We are betrayed!" shrieked Glyceria, placing herself before her sister to protect her. Then, with savage fury, she cried: "Who sent you to this place, miserable sycophant? You have made a mistake; this is a prison, not a bacchanalian revel."
"It is a golden cage, in which I find two doves instead of one."
"Put your insipid jests into rhyme, but spare me their tasteless folly. And now, go!"
"Very willingly if you will come with me; but the Augustus sent me here."
Glyceria hastily whispered to Sophronia: "Do not betray that you are my sister, or our father is lost, too."
Then she turned to the soldiers.
"Insolent knaves! Do you know me? I am the terrible Glyceria who sends down a rain of fire upon you when you are in camp, who makes the rivers overflow their banks before you, and in the midst of summer brings winter upon your bands so that you are swept away like flies? Do you no longer remember Trivius, whom in my wrath I transformed into a stag, and did not restore his human form until the hounds had torn him? Did you see before my palace the flesh-colored caryatides, who keep guard before my door and seem to follow every passer-by with their eyes? They were slaves who disobeyed me, and whom with a single breath I transformed to stone. Do you wish to be fixed to these walls as statues, or changed into wild beasts to rend one another to-morrow in the amphitheatre? Which of you dares to raise his hand; which of you will bar my way?"
The soldiers shrank back in superstitious terror. Ævius alone stepped before her.
"Divinely beautiful woman, it would be useless trouble to transform these fellows to brutes. You ought rather to change my heart into stone, that it may have no feeling for you. But now permit me to conduct this Christian maiden to the Cæsar, who will gladly see you the next time, but now desires to behold her. Though you should vouchsafe to wreak your utmost wrath upon my innocent head, I can do nothing else. My head and my heart are at your service, but Carinus has commanded my hands to bring this maiden before him."