"Insolent knaves! Do you know me? I am the terrible Glyceria who sends down a rain of fire upon you when you are in camp, who makes the rivers overflow their banks before you, and in the midst of summer brings winter upon your bands so that you are swept away like flies? Do you no longer remember Trivius, whom in my wrath I transformed into a stag, and did not restore his human form until the hounds had torn him? Did you see before my palace the flesh-colored caryatides, who keep guard before my door and seem to follow every passer-by with their eyes? They were slaves who disobeyed me, and whom with a single breath I transformed to stone. Do you wish to be fixed to these walls as statues, or changed into wild beasts to rend one another to-morrow in the amphitheatre? Which of you dares to raise his hand; which of you will bar my way?" The soldiers shrank back in superstitious terror. Aevius alone stepped before her. "Divinely beautiful woman, it would be useless trouble to transform these fellows to brutes. You ought rather to change my heart into stone, that it may have no feeling for you. But now permit me to conduct this Christian maiden to the Caesar, who will gladly see you the next time, but now desires to behold her. Though you should vouchsafe to wreak your utmost wrath upon my innocent head, I can do nothing else. My head and my heart are at your service, but Carinus has commanded my hands to bring this maiden before him." Glyceria whispered impetuously to her pale-faced sister: "Now a greater horror than death awaits you. But be strong. Under the _balteus_ which I fastened around you is a sharp dagger. You are a Roman; I need say no more." She pressed Sophronia's hand as she spoke, and without vouchsafing Aevius another glance, hastened through the ranks of the soldiers, who swiftly made way for her. CHAPTER VII. Trembling with horror, Sophronia stood on the threshold of Carinus' apartment. The spectacle before her seemed to her eyes more terrible than the torture chambers of the prison and the dens of the wild beasts. Drunken slaves lay on the floor, singing and touching goblets with drunken senators; men, rouged and clad in women's garments, were singing to the accompaniment of harps indecent dithyrambics, while they had twined the feminine anadem upon their heads with oak leaves, the simple ornament of civic virtue. The most prominent magistrates, consuls, prefects, tribunes, disguised as fauns and satyrs, were dancing with girls robed in transparent tissues, whose cheeks and eyes were glowing with the unholy fires of sensual passion; and in the midst of this diabolical revel lay Carinus, himself the greatest disgrace of his own imperial purple. The effect of the wine and the emotions roused by the scenes of this orgy were visible on his face; his hair was dripping with the perfumed salves that had been rubbed into it.