While escape was possible the risk was very great.
Also, Agathemer argued, we were too near to Rome to be safe if we got
clear away. Between dread of death if caught and fear of we knew not what
if we escaped, we stuck to our cookery. Mixed with our projects for
bettering our prospects we talked much of our amazement at the treatment
which the deputation and its associates had met in Italy. Manifestly the
townsfolk and their officials were not only overawed, but helpless. If
there had been no Rome, no Republic, no Praetorians, no Prefect of the
Palace, no central authority whatever we could not have been more
completely free from hindrance, coercion or question, Yet Agathemer and I
could not but conjecture that the Senate, Perennis and Commodus had been
promptly and minutely informed of all our doings, of our progress, of our
approach; and had taken measures to deal with us and our instigators. We
felt panicky.
Spouting long tirades about their loyalty to the Emperor, their hatred of
Perennis and their eagerness to foil one and save the other, our
irresponsible frontier centurions let their men and us loiter southward
through Cisalpine Gaul and Umbria as they had loitered on the other side
of the Alps, seldom marching more than ten miles a day.
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