Author of “The Broom-Squire,” “Bladys,” “Mehalah,” “Court Royal,” Etc. _Illustrated by_ IZORA C. CHANDLER NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS _Copyright, 1898_, BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY. _All rights reserved._ PRESSWORK BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. CONTENTS Book I I. The Port of Cenchræa II. An Ill-Omen III. Corbulo IV. There Is No Star V. The Ship of the Dead VI. I Do Not Know VII. The Face of the Dead VIII. The Sword of the Dead IX. Sheathed X. Ubi Felicitas? XI. The Veils of Ishtar XII. The Fall of the Veils XIII. To Rome! XIV. A Little Supper XV. The Lectisternium XVI. In the House of the Actor XVII. The Saturnalia of 69 XVIII. A Refugee XIX. The End of Vitellius XX. Changed Tactics XXI. The Virgin’s Wreath XXII. Quoniam Tu Caius, Ego Caia! XXIII. The End of the Day XXIV. Albanum XXV. By a Razor XXVI. Intermezzo Book II I. An Appeal II. The Fish III. In the ‘Insula’ IV. Another Appeal V. Atrium Vestæ VI. For the People VII. ‘The Blues Have It!’ VIII. The Lower Stool IX. Glyceria X. The Accursed Field XI. Again: The Sword of Corbulo XII. The Tablets XIII. The Hour of Twelve XIV. In the Tullianum XV. Drawing to the Light XVI. An Ecstasy XVII. Hail, Gladsome Light! Footnotes Transcriber’s Note DOMITIA. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. THE PORT OF CENCHRÆA. Flashes as of lightning shot from each side of a galley as she was being rowed into port. She was a bireme, that is to say, had two tiers of oars; and as simultaneously the double sets were lifted, held for a moment suspended, wet with brine, feathered, and again dipped, every single blade gleamed, reflecting the declining western sun, and together formed a flash from each side of the vessel of a sheaf of rays. The bireme was approaching the entrance to the harbor of Cenchræa. The one white sail was filled with what little wind breathed, and it shone against a sapphire sea like a moon. Now, at a signal the oars ceased to plunge. The sail was furled, and the galley was carried into the harbor between the temple that stood on the northern horn of the mole, and the great brazen statue of Poseidon that occupied a rock in the midst of the entrance, driven forward by the impulse already given her by the muscles of the rowers and the east wind in the sail. This Cenchræan harbor into which she swept was one of the busiest in the world. Through it as through a tidal sluice rushed the current of trade from the East to the West, and from the Occident to the Orient. It was planted on a bay of the Saronic Gulf, and on the Isthmus of Corinth, at the foot of that lovely range of mountains thrown up by the hand of God to wall off the Peloponnesus as the shrine of intellectual culture and the sanctuary of Liberty. And a furrow—like an artificial dyke—ran between this range and Hellas proper, a furrow nearly wholly invaded by the sea, but still leaving a strip of land, the Corinthian isthmus, to form a barrier between the Eastern and the Western worlds. On the platform at the head of a flight of marble steps before a temple of Poseidon, in her open litter, lounged a lady, with the bloom of youth gone from her face, but artificially restored. She was handsome, with finely moulded features and a delicate white hand, the fingers studded with rings, and a beautiful arm which was exposed whenever...