ABSTRACT
The group gathered on the stream’s bank was clearly military in character. A few hundred cavalry soldiers formed a protective screen around a group of men of higher status, many of them in the characteristic garb of Roman officers. All eyes, however, were focused on one man, seated in an open carriage at the stream’s edge, dressed in the ornate cuirass and scarlet cloak of a Roman general. He was a man of some 50 years, but still trim and athletic despite middle age. Fairly tall and of slender build, his face was handsome: rather narrow, with hollowed cheeks and deep set eyes, below a forehead made broader by the receding hairline which could not be entirely concealed by hair combed forward from the crown. He was deep in thought, the evident gravity of the moment shown by the silence that was broken only by the occasional snort of a horse or stamp of a hoof. Finally the man smiled and looked up, taking in the anxious faces around him, and broke the silence.
