The Gallic chieftains alone, the projectors of a Gallic empire, were rigorously pursued and chastised.

There was especially one, Julius Sabinus, the pretended descendant of Julius Caesar, whose capture was heartily desired.

After the ruin of his hopes he took refuge in some vaults connected with one of his country houses.

The way in was known only to two devoted freedmen of his, who set fire to the buildings, and spread a report that Sabinus had poisoned himself, and that his dead body had been devoured by the flames.
He had a wife, a young Gaul named Eponina, who was in frantic despair at the rumor; but he had her informed, by the mouth of one of his freedmen, of his place of concealment, begging her at the same time to keep up a show of widowhood and mourning, in order to confirm the report already in circulation.

"Well did she play her part," to use Plutarch's expression, "in her tragedy of woe." She went at night to visit her husband in his retreat, and departed at break of day; and at last would not depart at all.