“What is the matter? Ye Gods! surely Rome is not on fire again!”
“Madam! The household guard are assaulting the Capitol and have indeed set fire to the houses below, I doubt if the Præfect can hold out till Primus arrives.”
Duilia ascended to the flat top of the house. The palace of the family was in the Carinæ, on the slope of the Esquiline hill, hard by the gardens of Nero’s Golden House. Being on high ground it commanded the Forum and the Capitol, and looked over the tops of the vulgar insulæ in the dip of the Suburra.
It was the evening of the second day. Heavy clouds had lowered throughout the hours of daylight and the evening had prematurely closed. There had been desultory fighting all day, but as the night approached a determined set was made by the German guard to capture the Capitol, and the citadel of Rome that adjoined it, connected by only a small neck of hill. They knew that Primus was close at hand, and they were determined not to be caught between a foe before and another behind.
The Capitol is a rocky height rising precipitately above the Forum, and enormous substructures had strengthened it and formed a platform on which rose the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus that stood to Rome almost in the relation that the Temple did to Jerusalem, as the centre of its religious and civil institutions.
It was almost the paladium of the city, the fate of Rome was held to be bound up with its preservation.
And now Domitia and her mother looked on in the gathering darkness at the temple looming out as of gold against the purple black clouds behind, lit with the glare of the flames of the houses below that had been fired by the soldiery.
The roar of conflict came up in waves of sound.
“Really,” said Duilia, “Revolutions are only tolerable when seen from a house-top; that is, to cultivated minds—the common rabble like them.”
Shrill above the roar came the scream of a whistle, that a boy was blowing as he went down the street.