Between the blows, which fell slowly and together at regular intervals, the infuriated wretches, whose last exertions of strength were strained to the utmost to deal them, could be heard shouting breathlessly to each other: 'Strike harder, strike harder! the back gates are guarded against us by our comrades admitted to the pillage of the palace instead of us.

You who would share the booty, strike firm! the stones are at your feet, the gates of entrance yield before you.' Meanwhile a confused sound of trampling footsteps and contending voices became audible from the lower apartments of the palace.

Doors were violently shut and opened--shouts and execrations echoed and re-echoed along the lofty stone passages leading from the slaves' waiting-rooms to the grand staircase; treachery betrayed itself as openly within the building as violence still proclaimed itself in the assault on the gates outside.

The chief slaves had not been suspected by their fellows without a cause; the bands of pillage and murder had been organised in the house of debauchery and death; the chosen adherents from the street had been secretly admitted through the garden gates, and had barred and guarded them against further intrusion--another doom than the doom they had impiously prepared for themselves was approaching the devoted senators, at the hands of the slaves whom they had oppressed, and the plebeians whom they had despised.
At the first sound of the assault without and the first intimation of the treachery within, Vetranio, Thascius, and Marcus started from their couches; the remainder of the guests, incapable either of thought or action, lay, in stupid insensibility, awaiting their fate.

These three men alone comprehended the peril that threatened them, and, maddened with drink, defied, in their ferocious desperation, the death that was in store for them.