ression,
"in her tragedy of woe." She went at night to visit her husband in his
retreat, and departed at break of day; and at last would not depart at
all. At the end of seven months, hearing great talk of Vespasian's
clemency, she set out for Rome, taking with her her husband, disguised as
a slave, with shaven head and a dress that made him unrecognizable. But
the friends who were in their confidence advised them not to risk as yet
the chance of imperial clemency, and to return to their secret asylum.
There they lived for nine years, during which "as a lioness in her den,
neither more nor less," says Plutarch, "Eponina gave birth to two young
whelps, and suckled them herself at her teat." At last they were
discovered and brought before Vespasian at Rome: "Caesar," said Eponina,
showing him her children, "I conceived them and suckled them in a tomb,
that there might be more of us to ask thy mercy."

[Illustration: Eponina and Sabinus hidden in a Vault----97]

But Vespasian was merciful only from prudence, and not by nature or from
magnanimity; and he sent Sabinus to execution. Eponina asked that she
might die with her husband, saying, "Caesar, do me this grace; for I have
lived more happily beneath the earth and in the darkness than thou in the
splendor of thy empire." Vespasian fulfilled her desire by sending her
also to execution; and Plutarch, their contemporary, undoubtedly
expressed the general feeling, when he ended his tale with the words,
"In all the long reign of this emperor there was no deed so cruel or so
piteous to see; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a short
time all his posterity was extinct."

In fact the Caesars and the Flavians met the same fate; the two lines
began and ended alike; the former with Augustus and Nero, the latter with
Vespasian and Domitian; first a despot, able, cold, and as capable of
cruelty as of moderation, then a tyrant, atrocious and detested. And
both were extinguished without a descendant. Then a rare piece of good
fortune befell the Roman world. Domitian, two years before he was
assassinated by some of his servants whom he was about to put to death,
grew suspicious of an aged and honorable senator, Cocceius Nerva, who had
been twice consul, and whom he had sent into exile, first to Tarenturn,
and then in Gaul, preparatory, probably, to a worse fate. To this victim
of proscription application was made by the conspirators who had just got
rid of Domitian