P. Q. R. design beneath.
There is a second trumpet peal, and swinging into the great
Street of the Thousand Columns, at the head of his light-armed
legionaries, rides the centurion Rufinus, lately advanced to the
rank of tribune of one of the chief Roman cohorts in Syria. His
coming, as Odhainat and even the young Bath Zabbai knew, meant a
stricter supervision of the city, a re-enforcement of its
garrison, and the assertion of the mastership of Rome over this
far eastern province on the Persian frontier.
"But why should the coming of the Roman so trouble you, my
Odhainat?" she asked. "We are neither Jew nor Christian that we
should fear his wrath, but free Palmyreans who bend the knee
neither to Roman nor Persian masters."
"Who WILL bend the knee no longer, be it never so little, my
cousin," exclaimed the lad hotly, "as this very day would have
shown had not this crafty Rufinus--may great Solomon's genii dash
him in the sea!--come with his cohort to mar our measures! Yet
see--who cometh now?" he cried; and at once the attention of the
young people was turned in the opposite direction as they saw,
streaming out of the great fortress-like court-yard of the Temple
of the Sun, another hurrying throng.
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