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A SUPPER AT VESPASIAN'S . 375
The wild passionate verses had produced strangely different
effects 011 the little audience. The old king started up from
his couch, his breast panting, his eyes full of tire, and then
sank back again and hid his face in his mantle. For the lines
recalled to him his own heroic struggles, and his great father,
Cunobalin, and his noble brothers. Claudia mused in silence,
thinking of the day when the Prince of Peace should come
again a thought which Pomponia divined as she laid her hand
on the fair head of her friend. Vespasian looked grave, and
thought it rather treasonous of a Roman poet to turn such
verses into Latin. Pudens and Titus felt a pang of regret that,
in combat with a free people, the name of Rome should be
stained with the infamies of scamps and weaklings who had
provoked that terrible revolt.
Seneca little knew that Aulus, in reading extracts from the
letter of Suetonius, had suppressed a passage in which the general
had indignantly stated as one cause of the insurrection,
not only the wrongs of Boadicea, but the fact that Seneca
himself had suddenly called in large sums of money which he
had lent to the British at usurious interest, and that the demand
for repayment had reduced the poor Iceni to bankruptcy
and despair.
'
We have been talking about Britain all this time,' said
Titus ;
but here is our friend Julius straight from Palestine,
'
and he must have plenty of news to tell us about those odd
fanatics, the Jews.'
' '
How goes the world in Jerusalem ? asked Vespasian.
'
The question
is very interesting to an old soldier like me.
We constantly hear of risings there. I am told that affairs
are getting desperate, and who knows but what the Emperor
may some day despatch me thither at the head of a
'
legion ?
'
Nothing is more likely,' said Julius.
'
Unless you snore while the Emperor is singing, father,
as you did at Subiaco,' said Titus, laughing, as did all the
guests.
'Impudent boy!' said Vespasian, joining in the laugh.
'
Let Julius go on.'
when Pontius
Julius told them that ever since the days
Pilatus had half maddened the Jews by bringing the Roman
ensigns into Jerusalem, and Caligula had reduced them to