The two legates from Saguntum walked up the temple steps. Under the columns which sustained the pediment were numberless piles of loot from the last wars, deposited by the conquerors as they paraded through the Forum before the multitude, which had hailed them, waving branches of laurel. Actæon saw shields pierced by iron swords, rusted by blood; war-chariots with broken tongues, the gilded wheels bespattered with the mud of battles. They were spoils from the war with the Samnites. Farther on, standing along the wall, a row of hideous wooden dwarfs, dyed red and blue, stripped from the prows of Carthaginian ships after the great victory at the Ægates Islands; iron bars which had closed the gates of many cities conquered by the Romans; the golden standards decorated with fantastic animals which led the troops of Pyrrhus; the enormous tusks of the elephants which this descendent of Achilles had marched against the legions of Rome; the horned or eagle-winged helmet of the Ligurians; the darts of Alpine tribes, and, beside the door, as a trophy of honor, the armor of the glorious Camillus, paraded in triumph by the city after this great Roman had driven the Gauls from the Capitol. Along the walls, as a strange decoration, hung a long dark tissue, crisp as parchment. It was the skin of the great serpent which for a whole day held back the army of Atilius Regulus, when on his expedition to Africa he was marching to the conquest of Carthage. The horrible monster, insensible to arrows, devoured many soldiers before it succumbed beneath a shower of stones, and Regulus sent the reptile's skin to Rome as a testimony of the adventure.
The envoys from Saguntum had a tedious wait before a centurion ushered them into the Senaculum.
The Greek, sweeping his glance over the semicircle, was perturbed by the majesty of the assemblage. He recalled the entrance of the Gauls into Rome; the stupefaction of the barbarians in the presence of those Elders, firm in their marble chairs, wrapped like phantoms in their snowy garments which left uncovered only their silvery beards; their ivory staves held with a divine majesty, revealed again in the gleam from their steady eyes. None but barbarians intoxicated with blood-lust would dare to assault men of such patriarchal dignity.