events, the trade is so grown that it will not brook interruption a day. Ye may also have heard of the Chersonesan pirates, nested up in the Euxine; none bolder, by the Bacchæ! Yesterday word came to Rome that, with a fleet, they had rowed down the Bosphorus, sunk the galleys off Byzantium and Chalcedon, swept the Propontis, and, still unsated, burst through into the Ægean. The corn-merchants who have ships in the East Mediterranean are frightened. They had audience with the Emperor himself, and from Ravenna there go to-day a hundred galleys, and from Misenum—" he paused as if to pique the curiosity of his friends, and ended with an emphatic—"one."
"Happy Quintus! We congratulate thee!"
"The preferment forerunneth promotion. We salute thee duumvir; nothing less."
"Quintus Arrius, the duumvir, hath a better sound than Quintus Arrius, the tribune."
In such manner they showered him with congratulations.
"I am glad with the rest," said the bibulous friend, "very glad; but I must be practical, O my duumvir; and not until I know if promotion will help thee to knowledge of the tesseræ will I have an opinion as to whether the gods mean thee ill or good in this—this business."
"Thanks, many thanks!" Arrius replied, speaking to them collectively. "Had ye but lanterns, I would say ye were augurs. Perpol! I will go further, and show what master diviners ye are! See—and read."
From the folds of his toga he drew a roll of paper, and passed it to them, saying, "Received while at table last night from—Sejanus."
The name was already a great one in the Roman world; great, and not so infamous as it afterwards became.
"Sejanus!" they exclaimed, with one voice, closing in to read what the minister had written.
"Sejanus to C. Cœcilius Rufus, Duumvir.
"Cæsar hath good report of Quintus Arrius, the tribune. In particular he hath heard of his valor, manifested in the western seas; insomuch that it is his will that the said Quintus be transferred instantly to the East.
