"Ah! Licinius, Piso, Julianus!" cried the Prefect, startled out of his icy and defiant calmness by deep pain.
After a pause he controlled his emotion sufficiently to take up the letter and read on:
"When they had been quietly admitted into the city (shamefully decoyed!) they refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Emperor. They tried, contrary to their promise, to use force. Lucius Licinius attempted to take the Capitol by storm; Piso, the Porta Latina; Salvus Julianus, the Mausoleum. They fell, each before the place which he attacked. What remained of the Isaurians were taken prisoners."
"My second Julius follows the first!" cried Cethegus. "Well, I do not need an heir, for Rome will never now be mine! It is over! The great struggle for Rome is over! And brute force, small cunning, has conquered the mind of Cethegus as it did the sword of the Goth. O Romans, Romans! _You, too, my sons?_ You are my Brutus. Come, Syphax, you are free. I go to meet death. Go back to your deserts."
"O master!" cried Syphax, sobbing passionately, as he crouched at the feet of Cethegus. "Do not send me from you! I am not less faithful than Aspa! Let me die with you!"
"Be it so," said Cethegus quietly, and laying his hand upon the Moor's head. "I have loved you, my panther! Then die with me. Give me my helm, shield, sword, and spear."
King Teja's intention was to throw himself at night with all his armed men--except a few guards who would be left in the ravine--into the camp of Narses, and there, favoured by the darkness and surprise, to commit great carnage.
Then, when the last of his warriors had fallen, and--probably at daybreak--the enemy prepared to assault the pass, the unarmed people--at least those who did not prefer slavery to death--were to seek an honourable grave in the neighbouring crater of Vesuvius, after which the few remaining defendants of the pass would sally forth and die fighting.
When the King called his people together, and left the alternative to their choice, he was filled with pride and joy to find that not one voice among the thousands of women and children--for all the boys from ten years of age and all the old men were armed--was raised in favour of dishonour rather than death. His hero soul rejoiced in the thought that his whole race, by a deed unheard of in the history of nations, would die a glorious and heroic death, and worthily seal the renown of their great past.