The senators began to arrive. Some came from their business in the city and presented themselves garbed in the white toga with purple border, followed by their clients who turned their gaze in all directions as if to attract public attention to their majestic protector. Others came from the country, drawing up their carts before the steps of the Senaculum, and, handing the reins to a slave, ascended to the temple with their togas flung over their arms, dressed in the short cloak of coarse wool worn by farmers, and emitting the odors of their stables and crops. They were mature men who displayed in the firmness of their strong muscles the activity of their life of continued struggle with the soil and with enemies; old men with long beards and wizened faces, tremulous with age, who still revealed in their unflinching eyes reliance on their departing strength. The crowd from the Forum, surging toward the steps of the Senaculum, watched them with admiration and respect. They were the fathers of the Republic, the heads of Rome.
The two legates from Saguntum walked up the temple steps. Under the columns which sustained the pediment were numberless piles of loot from the last wars, deposited by the conquerors as they paraded through the Forum before the multitude, which had hailed them, waving branches of laurel. Actæon saw shields pierced by iron swords, rusted by blood; war-chariots with broken tongues, the gilded wheels bespattered with the mud of battles. They were spoils from the war with the Samnites. Farther on, standing along the wall, a row of hideous wooden dwarfs, dyed red and blue, stripped from the prows of Carthaginian ships after the great victory at the Ægates Islands; iron bars which had closed the gates of many cities conquered by the Romans; the golden standards decorated with fantastic animals which led the troops of Pyrrhus; the enormous tusks of the elephants which this descendent of Achilles had marched against the legions of Rome; the horned or eagle-winged helmet of the Ligurians; the darts of Alpine tribes, and, beside the door, as a trophy of honor, the armor of the glorious Camillus, paraded in triumph by the city after this great Roman had driven the Gauls from the Capitol. Along the walls, as a strange decoration, hung a long dark tissue, crisp as parchment. It was the skin of the great serpent which for a whole day held back the army of Atilius Regulus, when on his expedition to Africa he was marching to the conquest of Carthage. The horrible monster, insensible to arrows, devoured many soldiers before it succumbed beneath a shower of stones, and Regulus sent the reptile's skin to Rome as a testimony of the adventure.
The envoys from Saguntum had a tedious wait before a centurion ushered them into the Senaculum.
The Greek, sweeping his glance over the semicircle, was perturbed by the majesty of the assemblage. He recalled the entrance of the Gauls into Rome; the stupefaction of the barbarians in the presence of those Elders, firm in their marble chairs, wrapped like phantoms in their snowy garments which left uncovered only their silvery beards; their ivory staves held with a divine majesty, revealed again in the gleam from their steady eyes. None but barbarians intoxicated with blood-lust would dare to assault men of such patriarchal dignity.
They numbered more than two hundred. Between them were vacant seats of senators unable to attend, and over the concentric rows of marble chairs the white togas spread out like newly fallen snow upon a crust of ice. Behind them stood a row of columns in a semicircle, sustaining the cupola through which filtered a crepuscular light which seemed to favor meditation and concentration of the mind. A low stone balustrade surrounded the semicircle, and beyond it were grouped important citizens who had not the investiture of senators. In the centre the barrier was broken by a square pedestal sustaining the bronze she-wolf with the twins hanging to her dugs, and on the base in great letters, the device of supreme authority in Rome: "S.P.Q.R." A tripod sustained a brazier before the pedestal, and over the embers floated a blue cloud of incense.
The three legates seated themselves in marble chairs near the image of the wolf, before the triple row of white and motionless men.
Some rested their chins in their hands as if to hear better.
They might speak; the Senate would hear them; and Actæon, moved by the supplicating glances of his two companions, arose. In his mind impressions did not linger long; he had recovered from the emotion produced at first by the majesty of the assemblage.
He spoke deliberately, taking care, after the manner of a true Greek, to avoid lapses of style in expressing himself in that rude tongue, endeavoring to give to his words the emotion which he wished to inspire in the representatives of Rome. He described the desperate resistance of Saguntum, and her confidence in the support of the Republic, that blind faith which had inspired her people to hurl themselves outside the walls and repulse the enemy at the mere announcement that the Roman fleet had appeared upon the horizon. When he left the city it still had supplies for subsistence and courage to defend itself. But much time had elapsed since then—nearly two whole months. The ambassador had been compelled to make his way amidst adventures and perils, sometimes by sea, taking advantage of the routes of the merchant ships, again on foot along the coasts, and at this moment the situation of the city must be desperate. Saguntum would fall if they did not go to her succor, and what a responsibility for Rome if she abandoned her protégé after the latter had drawn Hannibal's enmity upon her for wishing to be Roman! How could other nations rely on the friendship of Rome when they knew the sad end of Saguntum!
The Greek ceased speaking, and the painful silence which fell over the Senate revealed the profound impression his words had made.