[35] IS TO BE BURIED. Usually a longer interval elapsed between the date of death and the funeral--about a week. [36] TEMPLE OF THE FLAVIA FAMILY. See Suet, _Dom._ 15 and 17. The ashes of Vespasian and Titus lay there. [37] I SEE HIM, BAREFOOT, HIS MANTLE TORN, RIDING TOWARDS PHAON'S HOUSE. For Nero’s terrible end, see Suet. _Ner._ 48 and following pages. Dio Cass. LXIII, 27, etc. Phaon was a freedman of the emperor, one of the few who were faithful to him to the last. See also what Dio Cassius (LXXVII, 15.) relates of the visions of Caracalla. [38] AT THIS MOMENT THE HEAVY TREAD OF CLODIANUS WAS HEARD APPROACHING. In Dio Cassius (LXVII, 15), it is Domitia, the empress, who surprises the boy playing with the little wooden tablet. [39] SERVICE IN THE CUBICULUM. Service at the altar of the Lares. See Suet. _Dom._ 17. [40] THE HOLY CITADEL OF JERUSALEM. The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, son of Vespasian, the reigning emperor at that time, occurred on the 10th of August, A. D. 70. [41] CATCHING FLIES, AS HE HAD BEEN WONT TO DO AS A BOY. See Suet. _Dom._ 3: “In the commencement of his reign he spent several hours alone every day, doing nothing but catching flies and impaling them on a sharp stylus.” CHAPTER IV. Cornelia, meanwhile, awaited this evening with feverish anxiety. The red-gold shafts of light, thrown by the setting sun on the eastern wall of the peristyle, had never lingered there so long as they mounted to the top. And when at last--at last they had disappeared, how slowly the darkness fell! How long it was before the night-sky had decked itself in its glory of stars. She gazed eagerly into the blue depths, seeking the constellation of Cassiopeia.[42] From that spot the god, veiled in invisible clouds, was to float eastwards through the air. The stars seem to twinkle and smile at her, as though they were conscious of the favor the immortals were about to grant her. To-night! to-night at two hours before midnight--what an unfathomable mystery. So potent were the prayers of Barbillus, the initiated minister of the gods, Osiris himself, the incomprehensible, had vouchsafed to meet a mortal woman, to appear in all the glory of his divine majesty, splendid and radiant as he once stood, risen from the dead, when the man-headed bird, Amun, had restored him to life. His face, to be sure, must remain hidden from a creature of earthly birth--that divine face of the sun, before whose fires a mortal would melt away as Semele,[43] in the Greek legend, had died in the arms of Zeus. Isis, the all-merciful mother, had made her brother swear never to appear on earth, without hiding the flaming glory of his countenance behind a hawk’s head, which the people believed to be the real head of that inscrutable divinity, but which the initiated knew to be a benevolent mask.