e past. The whole Roman colony of
students was there to meet them, and it was evident that the crowd
was mastered by some unprecedented emotion. Marcus darted forward,
and it was he who turned to Horace with whitened face, and said in
a curiously dull voice, "Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides."
The news had come directly from the governor, Sulpicius, one of whose
staff had happened to meet a student an hour after the arrival of
the official packet from Rome. Marcus hurried off to the governor's
house, thinking that so good a friend of his father would be willing
to see him and tell him details. Horace could see that the boy was
sick with fear for his father's safety.

For several weeks the students could think or talk of nothing else,
their discussions taking a fresh impetus from any letters that
arrived from Rome. Gradually, however, they settled back again into
their studies and pleasures, feeling remote and irresponsible. But
with the advent of the autumn a new force entered into their lives.
Brutus came to Athens, and, while he was awaiting the development
of political events at home, began to attend the lectures of the
philosophers.

Horace was among the first of the young Romans to yield to the
extraordinary spell exercised by this grave, thin-faced, scholarly
man, whose profound integrity of character was as obvious to his
enemies as to his friends, and as commanding among the populace as
among his peers. Before he came Horace had been moderately glad that
the Republic had struck at tyranny and meted out to the dictator his
deserts. Now he was conscious of an intense partisanship, of a
personal loyalty, of a passionate wish to spend his life, too, in
fighting for Roman freedom. And so, when this wonderful man asked
him, who was merely a boy with a taste for moral philosophy, and a
knack at translating Alcaeus and Sappho, to become one of his
tribunes, and to go with him to meet the forces of Caesar's arrogant
young nephew in one final conflict, it was no wonder he turned his
back upon the schools and the Muses, and with fierce pride followed
his commander. He could remember how stirred he had been that last
morning when, on riding out of the city, he had passed the famous
old statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. In immortal youth they
stood there to prove that in Athens a tyrant had been slain by her
sons. The ancient popular song that he had so often heard sung by
modern Greek students over their c