Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/229

 Mucia retorted, "if there had been ten dozen instead of two. I was not looking for lictors. I saw only Pompey."

"There were no lictors preceding him," Antony said simply.

"But why?" she marveled. "How can that be?"

"You see," Antony exclaimed. "Technically we disbanded at Brundisium. Nominally we have not been an army since we came ashore, nor Pompey a general."

"You mean," Mucia panted, "that the men are no longer under oath?"

"Certainly," Antony answered easily. "Not since the day after they disembarked."

"But what holds them together?" Mucia asked wide-eyed and breathing fast, her heart thumping.

"Pompey," was Antony's sufficient reply. "They are gentle as lambs. He is paying the expense of rations and everything else out of the booty account, and the technical irregularity will be overlooked, for it forestalls all chance of the quarrels, fights, stabbings, brawls, affrays, riots, pillaging, robberies and burnings that would certainly occur here and there as the men got to drinking, if they straggled up to Rome afoot, in loose bands without officers. The saving is obvious and great. As it is they have been as