ferocity of a tiger was burning within.

[Sidenote: Executions by order of Marius.]

As soon as he had gained possession of the city, he began his work of
destruction. He first beheaded one of the consuls, and ordered his head
to be set up, as a public spectacle, in the most conspicuous place in
the city. This was the beginning. All the prominent friends of Sylla,
men of the highest rank and station, were then killed, wherever they
could be found, without sentence, without trial, without any other
accusation, even, than the military decision of Marius that they were
his enemies, and must die. For those against whom he felt any special
animosity, he contrived some special mode of execution. One, whose fate
he wished particularly to signalize, was thrown down from the
Tarpeian Rock.

[Sidenote: The Tarpeian Rock.]

The Tarpeian Rock was a precipice about fifty feet high, which is still
to be seen in Rome, from which the worst of state criminals were
sometimes thrown. They were taken up to the top by a stair, and were
then hurled from the summit, to die miserably, writhing in agony after
their fall, upon the rocks below.

[Sidenote: The story of Tarpeia.]
[Sidenote: Subterranean passages.]

The Tarpeian Rock received its name from the ancient story of Tarpeia.
The tale is, that Tarpeia was a Roman girl, who lived at a time in the
earliest periods of the Roman history, when the city was besieged by an