And now they reached the capitol, and the great leader slowly descended from his car, and, led by pontifex and priest, mounted the hundred steps of brass, and stood before the temple of Jupiter Capitoline, the guardian god of the great city. Then louder pealed the trumpets and the hymns, and incense smoked up to the skies, veiling the very temple, in its dense wreaths of snow, from those who gazed up thither from the Forum. The prayers were prayed, the offerings tendered to the god, the victims slaughtered, the supplication and thanksgiving ended. Then, in the temple of the god, the Senate and the Consuls feasted, and the lord of that high feast was Caius Marius. Wine flowed and golden goblets clanged, and there was merriment and revelry and joy.
And where was he—Jugurtha?
“There is a place,”—we quote the words of his historian—“there is a place in the prison which is called the Tullianum, when you have ascended a little way to the left hand, sunk about twelve feet under ground. Walls surrounded it on every side, and a vaulted roof above, compact with stone groinings; but from its filth, its darkness, and its fœtid smell, its appearance is alike terrible and loathsome.” Such is the plain and unadorned description of a cell yet existing; they call it now San Pietro in Carcere. Thither the lictors bore Jugurtha; he spoke not at all, nor seemed to understand or to see anything. They stripped him of his gorgeous robes and rich trappings with fierce, indecent haste; they snatched the chains from round about his neck, the bracelets from his arms; they tore the pendants from his ears, and—for they might not spare the time to loose the clasps—tore the tips of his ears away also! They stripped him to the skin, yet he resisted not, nor strove, nor struggled; they lowered him with ropes—him, in his fetters—into that foul and ghastly cell, and then a horrid smile flitted across his features—“This bath of yours,” he said, “methinks is very chilly!” He shuddered, was let down, alone—and died there, as his crimes had merited!
HOPE ON.
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BY MRS. C. H. W. ESLING.
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Hope on—the clouds that gather thick before thee
Hide the glad light that led thy steps afar,