Be secret and silent, and let none suspect whence you come or what you seek.

Your life hangs upon it.

Go." The sun was sinking fast, staining the marble temples and colonnades of the Forum blood-red with its level beams.

For the most part the glorious place was deserted now, since, the Triumph over at length, the hundreds of thousands of the Roman populace, wearied out with pleasure and excitement, had gone home to spend the night in feasting.

About one of the public slave-markets, however, a round of marble enclosed with a rope and set in front of a small building, where the slaves were sheltered until the moment of their sale, a mixed crowd was gathered, some of them bidders, some idlers drawn thither by curiosity.