"Somewhat about the young Prince Tiberius which I did not hear," Eutychus trembled.
"That the Herod had his own making and not Caligula's to achieve!"
"A Roman's answer," Junia said to herself.
"Is there nothing more?" the questioner insisted.
"Give him ten stripes and turn him loose," Tiberius said. Two of the prætorians led Eutychus away.
"_Eheu_!" Junia sighed. "I could have stared the knave between the eyes and made him discredit himself in a breath! Ai! Owl-faced Lydia! thou art a destroyed peril, but at what a price!"
The bearers stood patiently under the glow of the morning sun, waiting their royal burden's humor to go on. But Tiberius shrank into the relaxation of thought. He had outlived every plot to assassinate him; he held in his hands consummate might; he was surely approaching the Shades; but the example of his infallible fortune, the fear of his merciless hand and the fact that he would not stand long in the way of ambitions, had not quieted the fatal tongue which bespoke him evil! He was sick of blood and torture, tale-bearing and intrigue, because he was surfeited with it all. But here, now, was this precarious Herod, barely escaping disaster which had pursued him for twenty years, wishing brutally and incautiously that he might die! Tiberius was at a loss to know what to do with the man. The thought wearied him. He wished now that he had ordered a hundred stripes for Eutychus instead of ten. What an officious creature Antonia had become!
Euodus folded his arms and waited; the patricians, approaching in chairs of their own, alighted, bowed, passed out of the path and went around, remounted their chairs and disappeared. The birds in the trees about, hushed by the talk below them, twittered and flew again. Euodus, casting a sidelong glance at the emperor, nodded at the nearest bearer.
The slaves turned back up the slanting street and the motion of the lectica aroused Tiberius.
"Did I command thee? To the Hippodrome, slaves!"
The bearers turned once more and began the ticklish descent of the paved roadway to the valley below, where the Circus of Tusculum was built.
The huge elliptical structure stood out in the plain, alone and solid except for the low, heavy arch of the vomitoria which broke the round of masonry. The trees about it were dwarfed in contrast, the columns shrunken, the viæ, approaching it from all directions straight as arrows fly, curbed and paved with stone, were as mere taut ribbons. But in the great slope of the Campagna, under the immense and sparkling blue of the Italian sky, it was only a detail in rock.