Macro in attendance upon Caesar had left a tribune in Rome as a post of despatch from which necessary information could be communicated to the prefect in Misenum. The tribune, a sour old praetorian, with more integrity than graciousness, charged to protect Agrippa's interests for Macro's sake, now that Caligula was prince imperial, was empowered with not a little of the prefect's authority, which he administered with a kind of slavish awe of it. So, when a young Alexandrian Jew, giving the name of Justin Classicus, bearing a letter of introduction from the Proconsul of Egypt, applied for a tessera which would give him admission to Misenum, the tribune refused, declaring that the visitor must be indorsed by a Roman of rank and in good odor with the emperor. Classicus took his departure, assuring the tribune that he would go to Baiae where young Tiberius lived in his father's villa, and get the indorsement of the lad, to whom Flaccus was notedly a partizan. As soon as Classicus had departed, the tribune rushed a messenger to Marsyas, with Macro's signet which would command horses at posts between Rome and Misenum, and informed the young man what menaced the Herod. Marsyas did not tarry for preparation. He knew that Classicus would go by the common route, by sea from Ostia, and that the overland route was only, by the luckiest of circumstances, the speedier. Before the messenger had returned to the tribune, Marsyas was on the road to Misenum. A day later, he passed the picket thrown out a hundred paces from the actual precincts of the villa of Lucullus, but when he offered his tessera to the praetorian posted at its inner walls, the soldier did not lower his short sword. Marsyas, who had come to know many of the praetorians, looked in surprise at the man. "Turn back, good sir," the man said. "None enters the lines to-day." While he knew that it was useless to ask the sentinel why the arbitrary order was in force, the question leaped to his lips before he could stop it. His voice was eager. "What passeth within?" The soldier shook his head. Marsyas drew away a space and thought. He knew that the little Tiberius was an exception to every law laid down by Caesar; Classicus could not have armed himself with a more potent name. Caligula's friends, even Macro's friends, might be barred, not the friends of the little beloved Tiberius. The obstruction was dangerous. He knew that he had to deal with Classicus. The bitterness in his heart rose up and smothered his distress: for the moment he lost sight of Agrippa's peril, his hope against Saul of Tarsus and his fear for Lydia, in the all-overwhelming rancor against the man who was setting foot upon all the purposes in the young Essene's life. While he stood wrestling with a mighty impulse to kill Classicus, a courier in a well-known livery bowed beside him. "The Lady Junia sends thee greeting and would see thee in her father's house."