of Caesar prepared the way for the Age of Nero, when
Christianity could find a world in a state of such culture, unity, and
social stability that it could win an adequate and abiding triumph.

Great care has been taken to keep to strict historical probability; but
in one scene, the "Expulsion of the Tribunes," there is such a confusion
of accounts in the authorities themselves that I have taken some slight
liberties.

W. S. D.

Harvard University,
January 16,1900.

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Praeneste 1

II. The Upper Walks of Society 21

III. The Privilege of a Vestal 37

IV. Lucius Ahenobarbus Airs His Grievance 50

V. A Very Old Problem 73

VI. Pompeius Magnus 102

VII. Agias's Adventure 117

VIII. "When Greek Meets Greek" 146

IX. How Gabinius Met with a Rebuff 159

X. Mamercus Guards the Door 172

XI. The Great Proconsul 198

XII. Pratinas Meets Ill-Fortune 217

XIII. What Befell at Baiae 241

XIV. The New Consuls 262

XV. The Seventh of January 277

XVI. The Rubicon 302

XVII. The Profitable Career of Gabinius 329

XVIII. How Pompeius Stamped with His Feet 334

XIX. The Hospitality of Demetrius 364

XX. Cleopatra 387

XXI. How Ulamhala's Words Came True 409

XXII. The End of the Magnus 433

XXIII. Bitterness and Joy 448

XXIV. Battling for Life 464

XXV. Calm after Storm 496

Chapter I

Praeneste

I

It was the Roman month of September, seven hundred and four years after
Romulus--so tradition ran--founded the little village by the Tiber which
was to become "Mother of Nations," "Centre of the World," "Imperial
Rome." To state the time according to modern standards it was July,
fifty years before the beginning of the Christian Era. The fierce
Italian sun was pouring down over the tilled fields and stretches of
woodland and grazing country that made up the landscape, and the
atmosphere was almost aglow with the heat. The dust lay thick on the
pavement of the highway, and rose in dense,