"Caesar advancing on Rome!" The Jewish pedlers took up the tale, and carried it to the remotest tenement houses of Janiculum.

The lazy street-idlers shouted it shrilly.

Laeca, catching sight of Lucius Ahenobarbus, just back from Baiae, and a little knot of kindred spirits about him, was in an instant pouring it all in their ears.

The news spread, flew, grew.

The bankers on the Via Sacra closed their credit books, raised their shutters, and sent trusted clerks off to suburban villas, with due orders how to bury and hide weighty money-bags.