THE FASCES
I
Cneius Pompeius minantibus direpturos pecuniam militibus, quam in triumpho ferretur … adfirmavit … se potius et moriturum, quam licentiae militum succumberet, castigatisque oratione gravi laureatos fasces objecit, ut ab illorum inciperent direptione: eaque invidia redegit eos ad modestiam.
Julius Frontinus, STRATEGEMATICON, IV, V, 1.
FAINT and blurred, but unescapable, the vast hum from the roaring early-morning activity of Rome reached their ears above and through all nearer sounds. About them the bustle and hurry of the camp, its clatter and rattle, its buzz and drone, enveloped them with insistent noise. Yet the two women faced each other with a mute hostility so tensely silent that the spiritual hush inside the tent seemed an immense stillness pervading all the world. Except their own and each other's breathing they heard nothing.
Through the entrance of the tent, past the edges of its drawn-up flaps, they could see, on either side, an elbow of an immobile sentinel. But the two sentries might have been of bronze for all the two women noted them or thought
