"Now it so happened that I had heard of your disgraceful Sabine feud, which mars the peace of a whole countryside near Reate, and I had sent a competent and reliable agent with four assistants to investigate and report. For once luck was with me: generally my luck as a ruler is as bad as it is good for me as an athlete. It so happened that my agents had just completed their preliminary investigations and acquainted themselves with general conditions when your idiotic feud broke loose in two abductions of women, one by each side, that put my agents on their mettle. They kept awake. They are no fools. My head man has a keen scent for incipient trouble; he managed to have one of his helpers get among the ambushers in Vediamnum and another among those on your byway, Satronius. Each of these two severally heard all the talk of the ambushers with whom he mingled; so I have had a faithful report of just what the Vedian ambush meant to do to the Satronian convoy they lay in wait for and similarly of the other side. Each was waiting for a sheep; both caught a wildcat. If the men in the ambushes had had any eyes or any sense, no fight would have occurred. As it was they got no more than they deserved. Hedulio was set on without provocation and merely defended himself and his associates as any self- respecting free man would. I have no fault to find with Hedulio. I take you all to witness. "Now that disposes of what is past. As to the future I shall tolerate no illegalities of any kind anywhere in the City, in Italy or in the Empire. You'll see. Dr. Commodus will cure this epidemic of lawlessness which afflicts the Republic. You'll see my agents run down, catch and bring to punishment the ingenious rascals who have been amusing themselves by masquerading as Imperial Messengers, scampering across the landscape for the fun of the thing, eating lavish meals at my cost, running the legs off my best horses, lodging luxuriously in the best bed at every inn they stop at, showing forged papers, or showing none at all, using no other means than effrontery and assurance. I'll have them stopped. I'll stop them. And I'll quell, I'll squelch this outburst of banditry of which we have too much. I'll see that my agents hunt down and capture and execute these highwaymen who rob not only rich travellers, but government treasure- convoys, who even rob Imperial Messengers. A pretty state of affairs when my couriers are fair game alike for impostors and robbers. I'll make the slyest and the boldest quail at the idea of interfering with one of my despatch riders and I'll exterminate all highwaymen. I'll have no one swaggering up and down Italy, now in Liguria, now in Apulia, mocking the law and its guardians, looting as he pleases, uncatchable, untraceable, hidden and helped by mountaineers and farm-laborers and farmers, even welcomed secretly in villages and towns, acclaimed as King of the Highwaymen, until songs are made on him and sung even in Rome. He'll soon