"Now listen, Sextus, and don't speak too loud or they'll hear you in the
cells; any of these poor devils would jump at a chance to save his own
skin by betraying you and me. Talk softly. I say, listen! There isn't
any safety anywhere with all these factions plotting each against the
other, none knowing which will strike first and Commodus likely to
pounce on all of them at any minute. I don't know why he hasn't heard of
it already."

"He is too busy training his body to have time to use his brain," said
Sextus. "However, go on."

"I think Commodus is quite likely to have the best of it!" Narcissus
said, screwing up his eyes as if he gazed at an antagonist across the
dazzling sand of the arena. "Somebody--some spy--is sure to inform him.
There will be wholesale proscriptions. Commodus will try to scare
Severus, Niger and Albinus by slaughtering their supporters here in
Rome. I can see what is coming."

"Are you, too, a god--like Commodus--that you can see so shrewdly?"

"Never mind. I can see. And I can see a better way for you, and for me
also. You have made yourself a great name as Maternus, less, possibly,
in Rome than on the countryside. You have more to begin with than ever
Spartacus had--"

"Aye, and less, too," Sextus interrupted. "For I lack his confidence
that Rome can be brought to her knees by an army of slaves. I lack his
willingness to try to do it. Rome must be saved by honorable Romans,
who have Rome at heart and not their own personal ambition. No army of
runaway slaves can ever do it. Nothing offends me more than that