While we ate, our sergeants, while they also ate somehow, held a
centurions' council, at which those of the fifty-four who had not been far
enough forward on the Highway to see and hear were informed, by those who
had, of what had happened. When our sergeant returned from this council he
told us, in a jumbled and mumbled attempt at an address.
From what he told me and from what I heard later I gather that, as the
column debouched from the bridge, its head was met and checked by a body
of mounted Praetorian Guards. Their tribune, in the name of the Emperor,
ordered the column to halt and bade its centurions deploy their men right
and left and mass them in a largish space free of big tombs. As they
deployed the Praetorians also deployed to left and right of the Highway
and the foremost mutineers descried on the roadway the splendid horses and
gorgeous trappings of the Emperor's personal staff, among whom, from the
statues, busts and painted panel-portraits of him which they had seen
daily in their own quarters and countless times on their road to Rome, the
more alert of them recognized their liege.
Then rose that unexpected wave of cheering which had first apprized us in
the rear that something unusual was toward.
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