Neither you, nor Antonius, Cassius, Curio, nor the other supporters of Caesar will be alive to-night.

Do not go into the Curia.

Get away, quickly! Warn your friends, and leave Rome, or to-night you will all be strangled in the Tullianum!" The Tullianum! Drusus knew no other term to conjure up a like abode of horrors--the ancient prison of the city, a mere chamber sunk in the ground, and beneath that a dungeon, accessible only by an opening in the floor above--where the luckless Jugurtha had perished of cold and starvation, and where Lentulus Sura, Cethegus, and the other lieutenants of Catilina had been garroted, in defiance of all their legal rights, by the arbitrary decree of a rancorous Senate! So at last the danger had come! Drusus felt himself quiver at every fibre.
He endured a sensation the like of which he had never felt before--one of utter moral faintness.

But he steadied himself quickly.

Shame at his own recurring cowardice overmastered him.