Vespasian was not the man to forget such an instance of cool promptitude, and Julius Placidus was marked out for promotion from that day forth. But with its courage, the tribune possessed the cunning of the tiger, not without something also of that fierce animal’s outward beauty, and much of its watchful, pitiless, and untiring nature. A brave soldier should have considered it a degradation, under any circumstances, to play a double part; but with Placidus every step was esteemed honourable so long as it was on the ascent. The successful winner had no scruple in deceiving all about him at Rome, by the eagerness with which he assumed the character of a mere man of pleasure, while he lost no opportunity the while of ingratiating himself with the many desperate spirits who were to be found in the Imperial City, ready and willing to assist in any enterprise which should tend to anarchy and confusion. While he rushed into every extravagance and pleasure of that luxurious Court—while he vied with Cæsar himself in his profusion, and surpassed him in his orgies—he suffered no symptoms to escape him of a higher ambition than that of excellence in trifling—of deeper projects than those which affected the winecup, the pageant, and the passing follies of the hour. Yet all the while, within that dainty reveller’s brain, schemes were forming and thoughts burning that should have withered the very roses on his brow. It might have been the strain of Greek blood which filtered through his veins, that tempered his Roman courage and endurance with the pliancy essential to conspiracy and intrigue—a strain that was apparent in his sculptured regularity of features, and general symmetry of form. His character has already been compared to the tiger’s, and his movements had all the pliant ease and stealthy freedom of that graceful animal. His stature was little above the average of his countrymen, but his frame was cast in that mould of exact proportion which promises the extreme of strength combined with agility and endurance. Had he been caught like Milo, he would have writhed himself out of the trap, with the sinuous persistency of a snake. There was something snake‐like, too, in his small glittering eye, and the clear smoothness of his skin. With all its brightness no woman worthy of the name but would have winced with womanly instincts of aversion and repugnance from his glance. With all its beauty no child would have looked up frankly and confidingly in his face. Men turned, indeed, to scan him approvingly as he passed; but the brave owned no sympathy with that smooth set brow, that crafty and malicious smile, while the timid or the superstitious shuddered and shrank away, averting their own gaze from what they felt to be the influence of the evil eye. Yet, in his snowy tunic bleached to dazzling white, in his collar of linked gold, his jewelled belt, his embroidered sandals, and the ample folds of his deep violet mantle, nearly approaching purple, Julius Placidus was no unworthy representative of his time and his order, no mean specimen of the wealth, and foppery, and extravagance of Rome.