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THE house of Vinicius was indeed decked in the green of myrtle and ivy, which had been hung on the walls and over the doors. The columns were wreathed with grape vine. In the atrium, which was closed above by a purple woollen cloth as protection from the night cold, it was as clear as in daylight.
Julia glanced at his face as he came through the door of the street wall into the vestibulum or courtyard where they were waiting. "Have no fear," she said. "When Gallus looks so solemn he brings good tidings, for if they are bad he smiles and makes light of them," and advancing she took him by the hand and led him past the porter's room into the atrium.
"Such jackals, my fathers, are not worthy that men of rank and wealth should watch them die," he said lightly. "The rabble will provide him with sufficient audience." And the senators, with awed and thoughtful faces, followed in the train of the captain-general of Carthage. Pacuvius Calavius sat in the atrium of his house.
Dim against the sky-line the outlines of the Capitoline and its shrines were now and then visible, when the night seemed for an instant to grow less dark. They were close to the Atrium Vestæ. All was quiet. No light within, no sound but that of the wind and their own breathing without. "We are not too late," whispered Agias.
She wandered somewhat aimlessly through the halls, for the great lords were not yet ready to appear before her, and as she crossed the atrium and went into the peristylium, looking with somewhat wistful longing toward the open portals of the vestibule and the vista of open air and sky from whence a breath of pure fresh air struck pleasingly on her nostrils, she saw that in spite of the early hour a large number of the poorer clients, suppliants at the door of the great Augusta, had already assembled there.
It was soon over and Brinnaria no longer a Vestal, but a free woman. It had been arranged that immediately after her exauguration her successor should be taken as a Vestal there in the Atrium by Commodus himself as Chief Pontiff.
After the curtain was pushed aside which divided the atrium from the tablinum, the house was open from end to end, so that through the tablinum and the following peristyle and the hall lying beyond it which was called the oecus, the glance extended to the garden, which seemed from a distance like a bright image set in a dark frame. Joyous, childlike laughter came from it to the atrium.
Here, if needs be, I will die." But before he could protest further, Cappadox had caught him in his powerful arms, and despite his struggles was running with him through the rear of the house. Pandemonium reigned in the atrium.
If a freeman had to be employed the enterprise would be still more expensive. It was all a matter of money, above all, of cash. Cash was forthcoming. Brinnaria returned to the Atrium by a circuitous drive out the Tiber Gate, round through the suburbs and in at the River Gate. She needed fresh air.
"I run?" cried the veteran, in hot incredulity, while with his single hand he tore from its stout leather wall-fastenings a shield that had been beaten with Punic swords at the Metaurus. "I run?" he repeated, while a mighty crash told that the front door had given way, and the attackers were pouring into the atrium.
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