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The Augustas, inwardly consumed with jealousy, were striving to keep up an appearance of dignity in the face of the insult which they deemed had been put upon them by this semi-deification of their kinswoman. Dea Flavia, pale and silent, stood facing the people, with eyes that seemed to look on something unearthly far away.
All those in the tribune did kneel immediately, the guard holding the standards, the senators and the knights. The Augustas all knelt too, and the patricians in the tribunes to right and left.
'The emperor was ex-officio Pontifex Maximus; the gods were national. Cicero declares as a principle of legislation, that no one should be allowed to worship foreign gods, unless they were recognized by public statute. Maecenas thus counselled Augustas: Honor the gods according to the customs of your ancestors, and compel others to worship them.
Whenever she had done that the Cæsar had laughed, and apparently made jest of her with the other Augustas who, in their turn, appeared greatly amused. The spectacle indeed had been somewhat tame, and but for the human chase of a while ago, would have been intolerably dull. There was surely nothing in the death of a few miserable slaves to upset the nerves of a Roman princess.
Augustas, therefore, as well as most of the succeeding emperors of Rome, scarcely built any other ships but those according to the Liburnian model.
The Augustas grouped around him were continually laughing as he turned to them from time to time with a witty sally, or probably with what was more in keeping with his character a coarse jest. And he watched the spectacle attentively from end to end.
He was satisfied that all eyes were turned on himself and on the majestic pomp which surrounded him. The standard-bearers were ordered to wave the flags so that a cloud of purple and gold seemed to be wafted all round his head, and he ordered the Augustas to group themselves around him. The people watched this pageant as they had done the earlier spectacles.
The ironical laughter of the Augustas round her quickly brought her to herself. "The heat is overpowering," she said calmly in reply to a coarse comment from the Cæsar. "His blood shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him." The heat was intense! The glare from the tribunes opposite seemed to sear the eyes, and from below there rose to the nostrils that awful sickening stench of human blood.
"Augustas always do bear their journeys well," said Sir Thomas; "though sometimes, I fancy, they find the days a little too long." But his tone was very different when Gregory asked his leave to make one more attempt at Popham Villa. "I only hope you may succeed, for her sake, as well as for your own," said Sir Thomas.
The legionaries, under the command of faithful Centurions, were cut off from the Palatine and from their Cæsar by the mob whose solid ranks they had hitherto been unable to break. The Augustas and their slaves were also safe within their palaces.
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