clarion summoned them to fall in behind the dictator's
company, and the troop rode out from the gate--out into the broad
plain--away from the protecting walls fluctuant with waving stoles, and
from which tear-dimmed eyes strove to follow them among the villas,
farms, and orchards of the country-side--away from the Forum, from the
sacred fig tree and the black stone of Romulus--away from the divine
triad that kept guard over the Capitol. Beyond lay the Alban
Mountains, and, beyond these,--no one knew where,--the strange dangers
that awaited them: fierce Spaniards with slender blades as red as the
crimson borders of their white coats; wild Numidian riders that always
fell upon the rear of Rome's battle; serried phalanges of Africans,
veterans of fifty wars; naked Gauls with swords that lopped off a limb
at every stroke; Balearic slingers whose bullets spattered one's brains
over the ground; Cretans whose arrows could dent an aes at a hundred
yards; and above all, over all, the great mind, the unswerving,
unrelenting purpose that had blended all these elements into one
terrible engine of destruction to move and smite and burn and ravage at
the touch of a man's will.

The cavalry rode two and two, thinking of such things; picked men,
equipped in the new Greek fashion with breastplate, stout buckler, and
strong spear pointed at both ends. What thoughts held the mind of the
general, none could fathom. With head slightly inclined he seemed to
study, now the ribbons woven in his horse's mane, now the small,
sensitive ears that pricked backward and forward, as the Tiburtine Way
flowed sluggishly beneath. As for Minucius, he alone seemed hopeful
and unimpressed by the dangers that menaced. He glided here and there,
reining his horse beside this senator or that lieutenant to utter a
word of the safety assured to Rome and of the ruin that hung over the
invader, or even calling back to the foremost of the escort some rough
badinage upon their gloomy looks; for Minucius was a man of the people,
scorning patrician pride of race, and wishing it known that, however
high his rank, he held himself no whit better than any potter of the
Aventine or weaver of the Suburra.

So, riding, thinking, talking, they reached Tibur, where the new levies
lay encamped.

Thence began the march of the army--a long, weary march to strike the
line of the Carthaginian devastators; and, as it rolled onward, the
stream of war gathered volume. At Daun