The coming of Sylla had, however, interrupted all; and, after receiving the dictator's command to give up his wife and abandon the Marian faction, and determining to disobey it, he fled suddenly from Rome, as was stated at the close of the last chapter, at midnight, and in disguise.
[Sidenote: Caesar's wanderings.] [Sidenote: He is seized by a centurion.] He was sick, too, at the time, with an intermittent fever.

The paroxysm returned once in three or four days, leaving him in tolerable health during the interval.

He went first into the country of the Sabines, northeast of Rome, where he wandered up and down, exposed continually to great dangers from those who knew that he was an object of the great dictator's displeasure, and who were sure of favor and of a reward if they could carry his head to Sylla He had to change his quarters every day, and to resort to every possible mode of concealment.

He was, however, at last discovered, and seized by a centurion.

A centurion was a commander of a hundred men; his rank and his position therefore, corresponded somewhat with those of a _captain_ in a modern army.