At the end of seven months, hearing great talk of Vespasian's clemency, she set out for Rome, taking with her her husband, disguised as a slave, with shaven head and a dress that made him unrecognizable.

But the friends who were in their confidence advised them not to risk as yet the chance of imperial clemency, and to return to their secret asylum.
There they lived for nine years, during which "as a lioness in her den, neither more nor less," says Plutarch, "Eponina gave birth to two young whelps, and suckled them herself at her teat." At last they were discovered and brought before Vespasian at Rome: "Caesar," said Eponina, showing him her children, "I conceived them and suckled them in a tomb, that there might be more of us to ask thy mercy." [Illustration: Eponina and Sabinus hidden in a Vault----97] But Vespasian was merciful only from prudence, and not by nature or from magnanimity; and he sent Sabinus to execution.

Eponina asked that she might die with her husband, saying, "Caesar, do me this grace; for I have lived more happily beneath the earth and in the darkness than thou in the splendor of thy empire." Vespasian fulfilled her desire by sending her also to execution; and Plutarch, their contemporary, undoubtedly expressed the general feeling, when he ended his tale with the words, "In all the long reign of this emperor there was no deed so cruel or so piteous to see; and he was afterwards punished for it, for in a short time all his posterity was extinct." In fact the Caesars and the Flavians met the same fate; the two lines began and ended alike; the former with Augustus and Nero, the latter with Vespasian and Domitian; first a despot, able, cold, and as capable of cruelty as of moderation, then a tyrant, atrocious and detested.

And both were extinguished without a descendant.

Then a rare piece of good fortune befell the Roman world.