The trial of Verres is the first great page in Cicero’s history. Who could, however, have prophesied to him, in 70, that history would write the name of Verres beside his own yet once again, but on the last page, that of a tragic and glorious death? How life teems with strange coincidences! These two men who confronted each other in one of the most famous legal duels in history, who separated with faces turned towards such diverse destinies—the conqueror to find glory and power, the conquered to find obscurity and seclusion—were fated to meet once more in life, at the last hour, on the brink of the same abyss. II THE TRIAL OF CLODIUS In December of the year 62 B.C., the festival of the _Bona Dea_ was being celebrated as usual in Rome. This goddess was one of Rome’s strangest deities. She represented fertility; and the object of the December ceremonies was to move the goddess to grant that all the fountains of fertility which nourish the life and prosperity of a nation might flow copiously throughout the year. Women only were admitted to the festivities, which were due to take place at night in the house of the Consul or of the Prætor. The wife of the Prætor or of the Consul presided; the lady members of the aristocracy took part; but the master of the house, with all the male slaves, was required to absent himself. It was popularly believed that the man who dared to take part in the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_ would be immediately struck blind. In that particular year, the ceremonies took place in the house of Julius Cæsar, who was Prætor at the time, under the presidency of his wife, Pompeia, and his mother, Aurelia. Cæsar had left the house, which had been decorated as the rites required. All the ladies of the aristocracy had assembled there, and the mysterious ceremonies were being carried on through the night, as usual, when in one of the rooms a slave belonging to Cæsar’s mother encountered a musician who seemed to have lost her way in the huge house, and not to know what she ought to do or where to go. The slave asked the stranger whom or what she was looking for. The musician did not answer. The slave, her suspicions aroused by the other’s silence, persisted with her questions. The musician was driven at last to say that she was looking for one of Pompeia’s slaves, by name Abra. But Aurelia’s slave was horror-struck when she heard the musician’s voice. It was the voice of a man! At once, with loud screams, she gave the alarm. A man, a man disguised as a woman, was present at the sacred rites of the _Bona Dea_! The musician bolted. Cæsar’s mother, a dignified and energetic woman, suspended the ceremonies, immediately ordered all the doors to be shut, and, followed by all the matrons, searched the house thoroughly from top to bottom. At last the musician was found hidden in Abra’s room; and several of the ladies present believed they recognised in her a young Roman patrician, famous in Rome for the blueness of his blood,