"Hasten hence," she said, throwing her ample _himation_ around her sister's shoulders, and fastening the golden _balteus_ about her hips. "You can follow my slave safely. No one will notice the exchange, especially amid the noisy tumult of the circus." "No, I cannot accept this sacrifice," cried Sophronia, struggling with her own heart. "God forbids it." "Your God is the God of Love," said Glyceria. "If on account of this God of Love you will not save yourself, I swear that this day shall long be mentioned by the world as a day of horrors. I know all the formulas, before which the beings of darkness tremble, at whose utterance the solid earth is shaken and blazing comets dash across the sky, sending down pestilences upon the living. If you sacrifice yourself to your God, I will sacrifice Rome to mine, and will destroy it so utterly that the centuries will find only fragments of its royal purple." The pallid girl trembled in her frowning sister's arms. The latter now quietly fastened the anadem she had taken from her head in her sister's hair, and drew her veil over her face. "There, now you are safe. If you are asked who rescued you, say that it was a stranger. I wish to cause no one sorrow. Never mention my name." The weeping girl embraced her sister, from whom she could not bear to part. Glyceria herself urged her away: "Go, hasten. Do not kiss me; it is not well to kiss me. Destruction is on my lips." Yet Sophronia did kiss her, and at the same instant Aevius entered with the guards who accompanied him. "We are betrayed!" shrieked Glyceria, placing herself before her sister to protect her. Then, with savage fury, she cried: "Who sent you to this place, miserable sycophant? You have made a mistake; this is a prison, not a bacchanalian revel." "It is a golden cage, in which I find two doves instead of one." "Put your insipid jests into rhyme, but spare me their tasteless folly. And now, go!" "Very willingly if you will come with me; but the Augustus sent me here." Glyceria hastily whispered to Sophronia: "Do not betray that you are my sister, or our father is lost, too." Then she turned to the soldiers.