“Too,” noted the old Idumean. The softened manner hardened. Was he a slave after all? “What did the harpies of the wine shops want of you? A lad clad in Damascus silks would not touch these sows of Rome’s gutters.” The boy answered eagerly. “They said the Emperor would pass in his chariot to-night; and the Empress Poppæa was to go down to the sea in her ivory barge. They meant to strip me, throw me in the water, rescue me, and offer me for sale as her barge passed—” The old guard laughed so harshly that all his ivory teeth gleamed ugly as a boar’s tusks. “And I’ll warrant if ever she saw your milk-white mountain skin stripped, they would have made the sale at three times a slave’s price. There is more in this—there is more in this. Why did you leave your mountains of Lebanon?” “I did not,” hotly protested the baited boy, becoming frightened at the changed manner of the Idumean. “When Felix cleared the robbers out of Galilee, I was held for ransom in their caves. They said we mountaineers were robbers. We never were. We are shepherds; but I was caught in my father’s caravan. He was the great sheik of the road from Damascus to the East; and Felix gave me to young Agrippa for a toy, a plaything. I was a page to the Princess Bernice when your prisoner Prophet in there made his plea before Agrippa the Young to come to Rome and prove his case; but when the Princess Bernice was sent to Cilicia to marry that old man there, and still the evil tongues about her and her brother—” Family Tree of the Herods Herod-the Great-I 41 B.C. to 4 B.C. or 4 A.D. married Mariamne and 4 other wives +---------------------+------------+-------------------+ | | | | Aristobulus Philip I. Herod II. (5 other lines ---------------------+ M. Herodias who married not historical) put to Death 6 B.C. | left him 2nd time | | | | Herodias | | banished 40 A.D. | | Herod III. Agrippa I. 37 to 40 A.D. Bernice's 1^{st} +-----------------+---------------------+ husband (died in | | | Caesarea of stroke | | | --44 or 45 A.D.) | | | | | | Agrippa II. Bernice Drusilla last of line married (1) Herod III. married Felix perished in eruption " (2) Polemon | of Vesuvius perished Vesuvius Agrippa III. an infant perished Vesuvius