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Then, indeed, people of all ages ran to meet them, each man being eager to be the first to receive an assurance of such joyful tidings, by the evidence of his eyes and ears. One continued train extended as far as the Mulvian bridge.
The press in front of us gradually melted away, we were able to sidle into the roadway, reform ranks and tramp on Romewards. After a very brief march we turned aside to our right into a meadow on the west of the road and its flanking rows of tombs, between the Highway and the Tiber, about half way from Mulvian Bridge to the Flaminian Gate of Rome; that is, about half a mile from each.
"Where are you leading me?" asked Ahenobarbus, a second time, after all his efforts to communicate with the usually fluent Greek met with only monosyllables. "To the lanista Dumnorix," replied Pratinas, quickening an already rapid pace. Keeper of a school of gladiators. "And his barracks are ?" "By the river, near the Mulvian bridge."
So completely were they under his spell that they returned to their camp, roused their men without waking any of their tumultuary associates, and marched the whole body of veterans, in the night, across the Mulvian Bridge and on all day to a prepared camp near Careiae, where they spent the night.
We traversed unhindered a camp sunk in sleep, where we heard no sound but crapulous snorings. Northward, towards the Mulvian Bridge, we sneaked out into the tomb-lined meadows. Through or above the dense fog we could spy the pinnacles of several vast and ambitious mausoleums glittering in the moon-rays.
He had ridden fast and furious, his horse was flecked with foam and straining on his last burst of speed. On over the Mulvian Bridge he thundered; on across the Campus Martius; on to the Porta Ratumena with all the hucksters and street rabble howling and chasing at his heels. "News! News for the consuls!" "What news?" howled old Læca, who was never backward in a street press.
He had spoilt a magnificent display of energy during his tenure of the censorship an energy that issued in the rebuilding of the Mulvian bridge and in the continuance of the great coast road from Etruria past Genua to Dertona in the basin of the Po by an unconstitutional attempt to continue in his office after the death of his colleague.
So I did not see, did not even glimpse, did not, from far towards the rear, so much as guess what was happening. I knew only that, as I was more than half way across the Mulvian Bridge, a wave of cheers started far forward in our column and ran back to my century and all the way to the rearmost men.
It is famous as containing the earliest record of the vision of Constantine before the battle of the Mulvian Bridge; and its highly coloured account of the tragical fates of the persecuting Emperors, from Nero to Diocletian, had a large effect in fixing the tradition of the later Empire as viewed throughout the Middle Ages.
The Mulvian Bridge over the Tiber is not more than four miles from Rubrae along the winding Flaminian Highway and we were crossing it before the third hour of the day was past. Marching with the first of the three centuries formed at Placentia I had about five-sixths of our column ahead of me.
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