CHAPTER XVI. The little town of Rodumna[108] lay half-hidden in olive-woods and vineyards, on the right bank of the Liger, in Gallia Lugdunensis. It had formerly been strongly fortified, but since the fall of the Republic it had lost its strategical and military importance. The foreign wars of the Empire were carried on far, far away on the northern and eastern frontiers, while internal convulsions had been constantly more and more centralized in Rome, since the rule of the Caesars had been fairly established, and a civil war in its original sense had almost ceased to be a possibility. Men lived faster in these days, and political changes were rougher and more summary. Thus, Rodumna had gradually dwindled in importance as a citadel; the walls had begun to fall into ruin, and were being overgrown with ferns and maiden hair. In Rome, and even in Lugdunum, men had something else to do than to pay any attention to this out-of-the-way little town, whose inhabitants, for their part, troubled themselves little enough about the affairs of the great world, and repaid contempt with indifference. Here reigned that idyllic peace “far from the madding crowd,” which Horatius Flaccus had sung in his famous odes. The inhabitants, for the most part small land-owners or farmers, won from the surrounding lands all that they needed for actual existence, and even something more; produce which was sent either down the river in vessels to Decetia[109] and Noviodunum,[110] or in carts, over the ridge of mountains to the east, to the chief town of the province. The poorer inhabitants fished in the river, labored in humble toil, and kept a few taverns in which the thick and muddy wine of the country was sold. In the course of the last ten years several houses and villas had been built outside the town walls, often separated by wide tracts and surrounded by gardens, fields and groves, each a little world of itself. It was one of these isolated country-houses, the home of his old and paternal friend Rufinus, that Cneius Afranius had designated as the place of meeting for the conspirators. They were to concentrate on this point by the ides of February,[111] and meanwhile each was at work independently in different parts of the province. They were to assemble as quietly as possible, to report the success and prospects of their efforts, and to form their plans for future action.