Then the Atrebate chief recalled his oath. He felt for his knife beneath his cloak, slipped behind the Roman with the agility of the savage and plunged the blade into the middle of his back. It was a Roman blade. The tribune uttered a deep groan and sank down. A trickle of blood flowed from one corner of his mouth. The waxen tablets remained on his tunic between his knees. Komm took them and looked eagerly at the signs traced thereon, thinking them to be magic signs the knowledge of which would give him great power. They were letters which he could not read and which were taken from the Greek alphabet then preferred to the Latin alphabet by the young _littérateurs_ of Italy. Most of these letters were effaced by the flat end of the style; those which remained were Latin lines in Greek metre, and here and there they were intelligible:
O thou, whom Varius loved more than his eyes, Thy Varius, wandering beneath the rainy sky of Galata ... And the couple sang in their golden cage of gold. . . . . . . . . . O my white Phœbe, with prudent hand give Millet and fresh water to thy frail captive. She sits, she is a mother: a mother is timid. . . . . . . . . . Oh! come not to the misty Ocean's strand, Phœbe, for fear ... ... Thy white feet and thy limbs So nimbly moving to the crotalum's rhythm. . . . . . . . . . And neither the gold of Crœsus nor the purple of Attala, But thy fresh arms, thy breasts....
A faint sound ascended from the waking town. Past the remnants of the Gallic huts where a few barbarians, fierce though of humble rank, were still lurking in the trenches, the Atrebate fled, and through a breach in the wall he leapt into the open country.
When, through the legionaries' sword, the lictor's lashes and Cæsar's flattering words Gaul was at length completely pacified, Marcus Antonius, the quaestor, came to take up his winter quarters in Nemetacum of the Atrebates. He was the son of Julia, Cæsar's sister. His functions were those of paymaster to the troops. It was for him, also, to apportion the booty captured, in accordance with established rules. This booty was immense; for the conquerors had discovered bars of gold and carbuncles under the stones of sacred places, in the hollows of oaks and in the still water of pools; they had collected golden utensils from the huts of exterminated tribes and their chiefs.