The Lion's Brood

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THE LION'S BROOD

by

DUFFIELD OSBORNE

Author of "The Spell of Ashtaroth," "The Secret of the Crater"

[Frontispiece: Here and there a Gaul would bound
forward . . . to throw himself prone beneath
the vermilion hoofs.]

New York
Doubleday Page & Company
1904
Copyright, 1901,
by Doubleday, Page & Co.

To the Memory of

HOWARD SEELY

BRILLIANT WRITER, TRUE-HEARTED GENTLEMAN,

STANCH AND LOYAL FRIEND

CONTENTS.

PART I.

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER

I. NEWS
II. WORDS
III. PARTING
IV. FABIUS
V. TEMPTATION
VI. DISOBEDIENCE
VII. PUNISHMENT
VIII. DISGRACE
IX. HOME
X. CONVALESCENCE
XI. POLITICS
XII. BRAWLINGS
XIII. THE RED FLAG
XIV. CANNAE
XV. "WITHIN THE RAILS"

PART II.

I. THE QUEEN OF THE WAYS
II. THE GATE
III. PACUVIUS CALAVIUS
IV. THE HOUSE OF THE NINII CELERES
V. THE BANQUET
VI. ALLIES
VII. "FREEDOM"
VIII. DIPLOMACY
IX. THE BAIT
X. MELKARTH
XI. THE SLAVE
XII. FLIGHT
XIII. WINTER QUARTERS

PART I.

THE LION'S BROOD.

INTRODUCTION.

Centuries come and go; but the plot of the drama is unchanged, and the
same characters play the same parts. Only the actors cast for them are
new.

It is much worn,--this denarius,--and the lines are softened and
blurred,--as of right they should be, when you think that more than two
thousand years have passed since it felt the die. It is lying before
me now on my table, and my eyes rest dreamily on its helmeted head of
Pallas Nicephora. There, behind her, is the mint-mark and that word of
ancient power and glory, "Roma." Below are letters so worn and
indistinct that I must bend close to read them: "--M. SERGI," and then
others that I cannot trace.

Perhaps I have dozed a bit, for I must have turned the coin,
unthinking, and now I see the reverse: a horseman, in full panoply,
galloping, with naked sword brandished in his left hand, from which
depends a severed head tight-clutched by long, flowing hair.

The clouds hang low over the city, as I peer from my tower
window,--driving, ever driving, from the east, and changing, ever
changing, their fantastic shapes. Now they are the waving hands and
gowns of a closely packed multitude surging with human passions; now
they are the headlong rout of a flying army upon which press hordes of
riders, dark, fierce, and barbarous--horses with tumultuous manes, and
hands with brandished darts. Surely it is a sleepy, workless day! It
will be vain to drive my pen across the pages.

I do not see the cloud forms now--not with my eyes, for they have
closed themselves perforce; but my brain is awake, and I know that the
eyes of Pallas Nicephora see them, and grow brighter as if gazing on
well-remembered scenes.

Why not? How many thousand clinkings of coin against coin in purse and
pouch, how many hundred impacts of hands that long since are dust, have
served to dim your once clear relief!

Surely, Pallas, you have looked upon all this and much more. Shall I
see aught with your eyes, lady of my Sergian denarius? Shall I see,
if, with you before me, I look fixedly at the legions of clouds that
cross my window an hour--two--three--even until the night closes in?

Grant but a grain of this, O Goddess, and lo! I vow to thee a troop of
pipe-players upon the Ides of June.

I.

NEWS.

"A troop of pipe-players to Minerva on the Ides of June, if we win!"

"And my household to Mars, if we have lost!"

The speakers were hurrying along the street that leads down from the
Palatine Hill toward the Forum, and both were young. Their high shoes
fastened with quadruple thongs and adorned with small silver crescents
proclaimed their patrician rank.

"Why do you vow as if the gods had already passed judgment, Lucius?"

"Because, my Caius, I am very sure that a battle has been fought. What
else do these rumours mean that are flying through the city? rumours
that none can trace to a source. It is only a few minutes, since my
freedman, Atius, told me how the slaves report that our neighbour
Marcus Sabrius rode in last night through the Ratumenian Gate; and when
I sent to his house to inquire, the doorkeeper feigned ignorance. That
is only one of a hundred tales. Note the crowd thickening around us as
we approach the Forum, and how all are pressing in the same direction.
Study their faces, and doubt what I say if you can."

"But is it victory or defeat?"

"Answer me your own question, Caius. Is 'victory' or 'defeat' the word
that men do not dare to utter?"

The face of Caius became grave. Then suddenly he burst out with:--

"You are right. I see it all now, even as you speak; and what hope had
we from the first? Who was the demagogue Flaminius that he should
command our army, going forth without the auspices--a consul that was
no consul at all in the sight of the gods! Then, too, there were the
warnings that poured in from all the country: the ships in the sky, the
crow alighting on the couch in the Temple of Juno, the stones rained in
Picinum--"

"Foolish stories, my Caius; the dreams of ignorant rustics," replied
Lucius, smiling faintly. "Besides, you remember they were all
expiated--"

"And who knows that they were expiated truly!" croaked an old woman
from a booth by the road. "Who does not know that, as Varro says, your
patrician magistrates would rather lose a battle than that a plebeian
consul should triumph! Varbo, the butcher, dreamed last night that his
son's blood was drenching his bed, and when he awoke, it was water from
the roof; and Arates, the Greek soothsayer, says that Varbo's son has
been slain in the water, and his blood--"

But the young patricians, who had halted a moment at the interruption,
now hurried on with an expression of contempt on their faces.

"That is what Flaminius stands for," resumed Lucius after a moment of
silence. "How can we look for success when such men are raised to the
command, merely because they _are_ such men; and when a Fabius and a
Claudius are set aside because their fathers' fathers led the armies of
the Republic to victory in the days when this rabble were the slaves
they should still be."

The friends had turned into the Sacred Way. A moment later they
arrived at the Forum lined with its rows of booths nestled away beneath
massive porticoes of peperino, and with its columned temples standing
like divine sentinels about or sweeping away up the rugged slope of the
Capitoline to where the great fane of Jupiter Capitolinus shed its
protecting glory over the destinies of Rome.

Below, the broad expanse of Forum and Comitia was thronged with a
surging crowd--patricians and plebeians,--elbowing and pushing one
another in mad efforts to get closer to the Rostra and to a small group
of magistrates, who, with grave faces, were clustered at the foot of
its steps. These latter spoke to each other in whispers, but such a
babel of sounds swelled up around them that they might safely have
screamed without fear of being overheard.

The booths were emptied of their cooks and butchers and silversmiths.
Waving arms and the flutter of robes emphasized the discussions going
on on every side. Here a rumour-monger was telling his tale to a
gaping cluster of pallid faces; there a plebeian pot-house orator was
arraigning the upper classes to a circle of lowering brows and clenched
fists, while the sneering face of some passing patrician told of a
disdain beyond words, as he gathered his toga closer to avoid the
contamination of the rabble.

One sentiment, however, seemed to prevail over all, and, beside it,
curiosity, party rancour, wrath, and contempt were as nothing. It was
anxiety sharpened even into dread that brooded everywhere and
controlled all other passions, while itself threatening at every moment
to sweep away the barriers and to loose the warm southern blood of the
citizens into a seething flood of furious riot or headlong panic.

The two young men had descended into this maelstrom of popular
excitement, and were making such headway as they could toward the
central point of interest. Now and again they passed friends who
either looked straight into their faces, without a sign of recognition,
or else burst out into floods of information,--prayers for news or
vouchsafings of it,--news, good or bad, true or false. Perhaps
three-fourths of the distance had been covered at the expense of torn
togas and bruised sides, when a sudden commotion in front showed that
something was happening. The next moment the hard, stern face of
Marcus Pomponius Matho, the praetor peregrinus, rose above the crowd,
and then the broad purple band upon his toga, as he mounted the steps
of the Rostra.

It seemed hours--almost days--that he stood there, grave and silent,
looking down into the sea of upturned faces, while the roar of the
multitude died away into a gentle murmur, and then into a silence so
oppressive that each man seemed to be holding his breath. Once the
magistrate's lips moved, but no words came from them, and strange
noises, as of the clenching of teeth and sharp, quick breathing, rose
all about. Then a voice came from his mouth, the very calmness of
which seemed terrible:--

"Quirites, we have been beaten in a great battle. Our army is
destroyed, and Caius Flaminius, the consul, is killed."

For a moment there was stillness deeper almost than before, as if the
leadlike words were sinking slowly but steadily along passage and nerve
down to the central seats of consciousness; then burst forth a sound as
of a single groan--the groan of Jupiter himself in mortal anguish; and
then the noise of women weeping, the shrieking treble of age, and the
rumbling murmur of curses and execrations,--against senate and nobles,
against the rabble and their dead leader, but, above all, against
Carthage and her terrible captain.

"Who are these men that slay consuls and destroy armies?" piped the
shrill voice of an aged cripple who had struggled up from where he sat
upon the steps of Castor, and was shaking the stump of a wrist toward
the north.

"Are they not the men who surrendered Sicily that we might let them
escape from us at Eryx? Did they not give up their ships, and pay us
tribute, and scurry out of Sardinia that Rome might spare them? I--I
who am talking to you have seen their armies: naked barbarians from the
deserts, naked barbarians from the woods--not one well-armed man in
five--a rabble with a score of languages, to whom no general can talk.
_They_ to destroy the army of Rome--in her own land!--what crime have
we committed that the gods should deal with us thus?"

"But the great beasts that tear up the ranks?" put in a young butcher,
one of the circle that had been drawn together about the veteran.

"How did his elephants save Pyrrhus--and then we saw them for the first
time?" retorted the cripple.

"You forget, that was before Rome had become the prey of demagogues;
before she had Flaminii for consuls."

All turned toward the new speaker--the young patrician whom his
companion had called Lucius. He was a man perhaps twenty-five years of
age, of middle height, sparely built but as if of tempered steel, with
strong, commanding features and dark hawklike eyes that were now
glittering with passion. It was not a handsome face except so far as
strength and pride make masculine beauty, but it was the face of one
whom a man might trust and a woman love.

The butcher was on the point of returning an angry retort, half to hide
his awe of the other's rank, when a friend caught him by the arm.

"Do you not see it is Lucius Sergius Fidenas?" he whispered.

The result of the warning was still doubtful, when a sudden commotion
in the crowd about them drew the attention of all to a short, thick-set
man of middle age, in the light panoply of a mounted legionary. Cries
went up from all about:--

"It is Marcus Decius." "He is from the army." "Tell us! what news?"

For answer the newcomer turned from one to the other of his
questioners, with a dazed expression on his pale, drawn face.

"What shall I say, neighbours?" he muttered at last. "My horse fell
just out there on the Flaminian road, and I came here on foot. I have
eaten nothing for a day."

But they paid no attention to his wants, thronging around with almost
threatening gestures and crying:--

"What news? What news--not of yourself--of the army?--of the battle?"

"There was no battle, and there is no army," said the man, dully.

Sergius forced his way to the front and threw one arm about the
soldier. Then, turning to the crowd:--

"Stand back!" he cried, "and give him air. Do you not see the fellow
is fainting?"

"No battle--and yet no army," repeated Decius, in a murmurous monotone,
when, for a moment, there were silence and space around him. "We
marched by the Lake Trasimenus, and the fog lay thick upon us. Then
came a noise of shouts and clash of arms and shrieks, but we saw
nothing--only sometimes a great, white, naked body swinging a huge
sword, and again a black man buried in his horse's mane that waved
about him as he rushed by--only these things and our own men
falling--falling without ever a chance to strike or to see whence we
were stricken."

The crowd shuddered.

"And the elephants?"

"I did not see them. They say they are all dead."

"And the consul?"

"I do not know."

Just then the cripple from the steps was pushed forward.

"Flaminius is dead. He died fighting, as a Roman consul should. But
you? What are you, to let the pulse-eaters at him. You should have
seen how _we_ dealt with them off the Aegusian Islands."

"Or at Drepana?" sneered the horseman, roused from his lethargy by the
other's taunt.

"That was what a _patrician_ consul brought us to," muttered the
cripple, glancing at Sergius. "Do you know what the Claudian did?
When the sacred chickens would not eat, he cried out, 'Then they shall
drink,' and ordered them thrown overboard. How could soldiers win when
an impious commander had first challenged the gods?"

"And what about Flaminius ordering our standards to be dug up when they
could not be drawn from the earth?" retorted the other.

"Did he do that?" asked several, and for a moment the feeling that had
been with the cripple, and against the victim of this latest disaster,
seemed divided.

Sergius perceived only too clearly that, in the present temper of men's
minds, the faintest spark could light fires of riot and murder that
might leave but a heap of ashes and corpses for the Carthaginian to
gain. Taking advantage of the momentary lull, he said in conciliatory
tones:--

"Flaminius neglected the auspices, and disaster came upon us for his
impiety, but it appears that he died like a brave soldier, and he is a
whip-knave who strikes at such. As for this man, he needs succour and
care. Stand aside, then, that I may take him where his wants may be
ministered to. There will soon be plenty of fugitives to fill your
ears with tales."

"Not many, master, not many," murmured Decius, as the young man forced
a way for them through the crowd. "Some are taken, but most lie in the
defile of Trasimenus or under the waters of the Lake."

Sergius hurried on, thinking of Varbo the butcher's dream, and of
Arates the Greek soothsayer's interpretation.

II.

WORDS.

Three days had passed since the awful news from the shore of Lake
Trasimenus had plunged Rome into horror and despair. Every hour had
brought in stragglers: horse, foot, fugitives from the country-side,
each bearing his tale of slaughter. Crowds gathered at the gates,
swarming about every newcomer, vociferous for his story, and then
cursing and threatening the teller because it was what they knew it
must be.

In the atrium of Titus Manlius Torquatus, on the brow of the Palatine,
overlooking the New Way, was gathered a company of three: the aged
master of the house, a type of the Roman of better days, and a worthy
descendant of that Torquatus who had won the name; his son Caius, the
youth who had been with Sergius in the Forum; and Lucius Sergius
himself. All were silent and serious.

The elder Torquatus sat by a square fountain ornamented with bronze
dolphins, that lay in the middle of the mosaic paving of the apartment.
The walls were painted half yellow, half red, after the manner of Magna
Grascia, while around them were ranged the statues of the Manlian
nobles. The roof was supported in the Tuscan fashion by four beams
crossing each other at right angles, and including between them the
open space above the fountain.

It was the old man who spoke first.

"Do not think, my Lucius, but that I see the justice of your prayer, or
that I wish otherwise than that Marcia should wind wool about your
doorposts. Still there is much to be said for delay. Surely these
days are not auspicious ones for marriages, and surely better will
come. You have my pledge, as had my dead friend Marcus Marcius in the
matter of her name. Do you think it was nothing for me to call a
daughter other than Manlia--and for a plebeian house at that? Yet she
is Marcia. Doubt not that I will keep this word as well."

"Aye, but, father," persisted Sergius, "is it not something that she
should be mine to protect in time of peril?"

"And who so able to protect as Lucius," put in Caius, with an admiring
glance, for Caius Torquatus was six years younger than his friend, and
admired him with all the devotion of a younger man.

"Has it come that our house cannot protect its women?" cried the elder
Torquatus. "What more shameful than that our daughter should be
carried thus across a Sergian threshold--going like a slave to her
master!" He spoke proudly and sternly. Then, turning to Sergius, he
went on more gently: "Were you to remain in the city, my son, there
might be more force in what you claim; but you will go out with one of
the new legions that they will doubtless raise, and you will believe an
old man who says that it is not well for a soldier in the field to have
a young wife at home."

Sergius flushed and was silent, lest his answer should savour of pride
or disrespect toward an elder.

Suddenly they became conscious of a commotion in the street. Shrill
cries were borne to their ears, and, a moment later, blows fell upon
the outer door, followed by the grinding noise as it turned upon its
pivots. A freedman burst into the atrium.

Titus Torquatus rose from his seat, and half raised his staff as if to
punish the unceremonious intrusion. Then he noted the excitement under
which the man seemed to be labouring, and stood stern and silent to
learn what news could warrant such a breach of decorum.

"It is Maharbal, they say--" and the speaker's voice came almost in
gasps--"Maharbal and the Numidians--"

"Not at the gates!" cried both young men, springing to their feet; but
the other shook his head and went on:--

"No, not that--not _yet_, but he has cut up four thousand cavalry in
Umbria with Caius Centenius. The consul had sent them from Gaul--"

"Be silent!" commanded the elder Torquatus. "Surely I hear the public
crier in the street. Is he not summoning the Senate? Velo," he said,
turning to the freedman; "you are pardoned for your intrusion. Go,
now, and bear orders from me to arm my household, and that my clients
and freedmen wait upon me in the morning. It is possible that the
Republic may call for every man; and though I fear Titus Manlius
Torquatus cannot strike the blows he struck in Sicily, yet even _his_
sword might avail to pierce light armour; and he is happy in that he
can give those to the State whose muscles shall suffice to drive the
point through heavy buckler and breastplate."

"Shall it be permitted that I attend you to the Senate House?" asked
Caius.

His father inclined his head, and, donning the togas which slaves had
brought, they hurried into the street, hardly noting that Sergius had
reseated himself and was gazing absently down into the water, counting
the ripples that spread from where each threadlike stream fell from its
dolphin-mouth source.

He did not know how long he had sat thus, nor was he, perhaps,
altogether conscious of his motive in failing to pay the aged senator
the honour of accompanying him, at least so far as the gates of the
Temple of Concord. Sounds came to his ears from the apartments above:
the trampling of feet and bustle of preparation that told of Velo's
delivery of his patron's commands. Then a woman's laugh rang through
the passage that led back to the garden of the peristyle.

Sergius rose and turned, just as a girl sprang out into the atrium,
looking back with a laughing challenge to some one who seemed to pursue
her, but who hesitated to issue from the protecting darkness.

"What do you fear, Minutia," she cried. "My father and Caius have
gone, and there is no one--oh!"

Suddenly she became conscious of Sergius' presence, and her olive
cheeks flushed to a rich crimson. Then she faced him with an air of
pretty defiance and went on:--

"No one here but Lucius Sergius Fidenas, who should have business
elsewhere."

Sergius said nothing, but continued to stand with eyes fixed
thoughtfully upon her face.

Her figure was tall, slender, and very graceful, her hair and eyes were
dark, and her features delicate and perfectly moulded. Over all was
now an expression of hoydenish mirth that bespoke the complete
forgetfulness of serious things that only comes to young girls. His
attentive silence seemed at last to disturb her. An annoyed look drove
the smile from her lips, and, with an almost imperceptible side motion
of her small head, she went on:--

"Surely Lucius Sergius Fidenas has not allowed my father to go to the
Senate House with only Caius to attend him! Lucius respects my father
too much for that--and too disinterestedly. It is an even more serious
omission than his failure to attend the consul at Trasimenus--"

Sergius' eyes blazed at the taunt, and, struggling with the answer that
rose to his lips, he said nothing for fear he might say too much.

The girl watched him closely. Her mirth returned a little at the sight
of his confusion, and, with her mirth, came something of mercy.

"Oh, to be sure, his wound. I almost forgot that. Tell me, my brave
Lucius, did the Gauls bite hard when they caught you in the woods and
drove you and my brave uncle to Tanes? How funny for naked Gauls to
ambush Roman legionaries and chase them home! Father has not spoken to
Uncle Cneus since. He says it was his duty to have remained on the
field, and I suppose he thinks it was yours, too, instead of running
away like a fox to be shut up in his hole."

Sergius had recovered his composure now, but his brow was clouded.

"You are as cruel as ever, Marcia," he said. "And yet I know you have
heard that it was the men of my maniple who carried me away, senseless
from the blow of a dead man."

"Oh, you _did_ kill him. I remember now," she resumed, with some
display of interest. "You had run him through, had you not? and he
just let his big sword drop on your head. I got Caius to show me about
it, and I was the Gaul. Caius did not stab me, but I let the stick
fall pretty hard, and Caius had a sore head for two days. I meant it
for you, because you are trying to make an old woman of me when I am
hardly a girl."

"Marcia--" began Lucius; but she raised her hand warningly and went
on:--

"Do you want me to tell you why my father will not let you marry me
now? There are two reasons. One because I don't want him to, and
another because he thinks you must do something great to wipe out the
stain of a Roman centurion's even being _carried_ away before the
Gauls."

"That will be an easy task, judging by the news we receive each day. I
wish I felt as certain of the safety of the Republic as I am that my
honour shall be satisfactorily vindicated."

He spoke bitterly, but she went on without taking note of his meaning.

"These are auspicious words, my Lucius. You will regain your honour;
father will once more receive you into his favour, and, by that time, I
shall doubtless be old enough to marry,--perhaps too old,--but, no, I
must not wait so long as that. Perhaps I shall have married some one
else by the time you are worthy of my favour."

"More probably I shall have ceased to care for the favour of living men
and women."

"Truly? And you think you will have to die? Perhaps you will be a
Decius Mus, and stand on the javelin and wear the Cincture Gabinus; and
then I shall mourn for you and hang so many garlands on your tomb that
all the shades of your friends will be mad with jealousy--"

"Marcia, is it possible for you to be serious?"

He was pale with suppressed passion, and, as he spoke, he stepped
forward and laid his hand upon her wrist.

She sprang back and half raised a light staff she carried, while her
face flushed crimson.

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