A Friend of Cæsar: A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C.

And then it was,--with the chariots bearing the guests almost driving in at the gates of the palace,--that Cerrinius, Caesar's barber, came before his master with an alarming ta...

A messenger to the consuls! 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...

Pisander's view of life became a score of shades more rosy when he seized the hand of the handsome slave-boy, then embraced him, and began praising the gods for preserving his f...

Drusus had at last finished the business which centred around the death of his uncle, old Publius Vibulanus. He had walked behind the bier, in company with the other relatives o...

It was growing late, but the proconsul apparently was manifesting no impatience. All the afternoon he had been transacting the routine business of a provincial governor--listeni...

The rapid march of events that week had taken Drusus out of himself, and made him forgetful of personal consequences; but it sobered him when he heard Curio and Caelius, his ass...

Agias left Phaon in the clutches of the landlord and his subordinates and was reasonably certain that since the freedman had not a farthing left with which to bribe his keepers,...

Probably of the various personages mentioned in the course of our story none was more thoroughly enjoying life about this time than Agias. Drusus had left him in the city when h...

The pomp and gluttony of Roman banquets have been too often described to need repetition here; neither would we be edified by learning all the orgies that Marcus Laeca (an old C...

The sentries were going their rounds; the camp-fires were burning low. Over on the western hills bounding the Thessalian plain-land lingered the last bars of light. It was oppre...

While grave senators were contending, tribunes haranguing, imperators girding on the sword, legions marching, cohorts clashing,--while all this history was being made in the out...

A "clear singing zephyr" out of the west sped the ships on their way. Down they fared along the coast, past the isle of Capreae, then, leaving the Campanian main behind, cut the...

Cornelia was at Baiae, the famous watering-place, upon the classic Neapolitan bay,--which was the Brighton or Newport of the Roman. Here was the haunt of the sybarites, whose ga...

It was the Roman month of September, seven hundred and four years after Romulus--so tradition ran--founded the little village by the Tiber which was to become "Mother of Nations...

The plot was foiled. Drusus was unquestionably safe. So long as Flaccus had the affidavits of Phaon's confession and the depositions of the captured gladiators stored away in hi...

Cornelia knew not whether to be merry or to weep when the report of the fate of Pompeius reached her. That she would be delivered up to her uncle was no longer to be dreaded; bu...

It was very early in the morning. From the streets, far below, a dull rumbling was drifting in at the small, dim windows. On the couch, behind some faded curtains, a man turned...

The months had come and gone for Cornelia as well as for Quintus Drusus, albeit in a very different manner. The war was raging upon land and sea. The Pompeian fleet controlled a...

If we had been painting an ideal heroine, gifted with all the virtues which Christian traditions of female perfection throw around such characters, Cornelia would have resigned...

It had come--the great crisis that by crooked ways or straight was to set right all the follies and crimes of many a generation. On the Calends of January Lentulus Crus and Caiu...

Publius Gabinius, the boon comrade of Lucius Ahenobarbus, differed little from many another man of his age in mode of life, or variety of aspirations. He had run through all the...

Drusus started long before daybreak on his journey to Rome; with him went Cappadox, his ever faithful body-servant, and Pausanias, the amiable and cultivated freedman who had be...

Cornelia had surmised correctly that Pratinas, not Lucius Ahenobarbus, would be the one to bring the plot against Drusus to an issue. Lucius had tried in vain to escape from the...

Like all human things, the war ended. The Alexandrians might rage and dash their numbers against the palace walls. Ganymed and young Ptolemaeus, who had gone out to him, pressed...

Very wretched had been the remnants of Dumnorix's band of gladiators, when nightfall had covered them from pursuit by the enraged Praenestians. And for some days the defeated as...