"That voice of God shall shout for joy at thy head on the rostrum! Such is the fate of all who would serve the people!" The eloquent tongue, stabbed with the harlot’s bodkin, the head and the hand, nailed on the beaked column in after days, showed which best knew the people, their savior, or their parricide. There is a place in Rome—there _is_ a place—reader, thou mayest have seen it—on the right hand as thou goest up the steps of the Asylum ascending from the forum to the capitol. "There _is_ a place," wrote Sallust, some nineteen hundred years ago—"There _is_ a place, within the prison, which is called Tullianum, after you have ascended a little way to the left, about twelve feet underground. It is built strongly with walls on every side, and arched above with a stone vaulting. But its aspect is foul and terrible from neglect, darkness, and stench." It is there _now_—thou mayest have seen it, reader. Men call it the Mamertine Prison. It was then called Tullianum, because it was so antique at that time, that vague tradition only told of its origin long centuries before, built by the fabulous King Tullius. The Tullianum—The Mamertine Prison. The _bath_, which Jugurtha found very cold, when the earrings had been torn from his bleeding ears, and, stript of his last vestment, he was let down to die by the hangman’s noose. The prison, in which, scarce one century later, Saint Paul was held in durance, what time "Agrippa said unto Festus, This man might have been set at liberty, had he not appealed unto _Cæsar_." Unto _Cæsar_? Cæsar the third Emperor, the third tyrant of the Roman people. Lentulus _had_ appealed unto Cæsar, and was cast likewise into the Tullianum. The voice of the people, is the voice of God. Whether of the twain slew Lentulus? whether of the twain set free Paul, from the Tullianum? In those days, there was a tall and massive structure above that sordid and tremendous vault, on the right hand as you go up towards the capitol. The steps of the asylum were lined on either side by legionaries in full armor; and as the Consul walked up with his victim, side by side, each soldier faced about, and, by a simple movement, doubling their files, occupied the whole space of the steep ascent with a solid column; while all the heights above, and the great capitol itself, bristled with spears, and flashed with tawny light from the dense ranks of brazen corslets. The Capital Triumvirs received the Consul at the door; and with his prisoner he passed inward. It was in perfect keeping with the Roman character, that a man, hopeless of success, should die without an effort; and to the fullest, Lentulus acted out that character. Impassive and unmoved, he went to his death. He disgraced his evil life by no cowardice in death; by no fruitless call upon the people for assistance, by no vain cry to the nobles for mercy. But it was the impassibility of the Epicurean, not of the Stoic, that sustained him.