By threats of the most atrocious nature, they had at length succeeded in compelling her to temporary silence. Death she had not only despised, but implored, even when the point of their daggers were razing the skin of her soft neck; and so terribly were they embarrassed and exasperated by her persistence, that it is probable they would have taken her life, had it not been for fear of Catiline, whose orders were express to bring her to his camp alive and in honor. At length Aulus Fulvius had threatened in the plainest language outrages so enormous, that the poor girl’s spirit sank, and that she took an oath, in order to avoid immediate indignities, and those the most atrocious, to remain silent during the next six hours. Had she been able to possess herself of any weapon, she would undoubtedly have destroyed herself, as the only means she could imagine of escaping what to her was worse than loss of life, the loss of honor; and it was chiefly in the hope of effecting this ere nightfall, that she took the oath prescribed to her, in terms of such tremendous sanctity, that no Roman would dream of breaking it, on any pretext of compulsion. Liberated by their success in this atrocious scheme, from that apprehension, they now pushed forward rapidly, and reached the station at Baccanæ, in a wooded gorge between a range of low hills, and a clear lake, at about nine in the morning, of our time, or the third hour by Roman computation. Here they obtained a fresh horse for the vehicle which carried Julia, and tarrying so long only as to swallow a draught of wine, they pressed onward through a steep defile along which the road wound among wooded crags toward Sutrium. At this place, which was a city of some note, they were joined by forty or fifty partisans, well armed and mounted on good horses, all veteran soldiers who had been settled on the confiscated estates of his enemies by the great usurper Sylla, and thenceforth feeling themselves strong enough to overawe any opposition they might meet on the way, they journeyed at a slower rate in perfect confidence of success, numbering now not less than sixty well-equipped Cavaliers. Before noon, they were thirty miles distant from Rome, and had reached the bottom of a long and almost precipitous ascent where the road, scorning any divergence to the right or left, scaled the abrupt heights of a craggy hill, known at the present day as the Monte Soriano, the ancient name of which has not descended to these times. Scarcely however had they reached the first pitch of the hill, in loose and straggling order, when the rearmost rider, came spurring furiously to the head of the column, and announced to Aulus Fulvius, that they were pursued by a body of men, nearly equal to themselves in number, who were coming up at a rate so rapid, as made it certain that they would be overtaken, encumbered as they were with the wheeled carriage conveying the hapless Julia.