Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/231

 thongs, each including a broad-bladed keen-edged axe, silver-mounted and its handle silver-ringed. She bent over them and forced herself to her expected outward semblance and to ask questions. Antony expounded as before.

Yes, these were the very fasces Pompey had assumed in Sicily with Sulla's permission, when he was only twenty-two. The laurel-wreaths were pure gold, the same he had added with Sulla's consent when he returned from Africa and triumphed and his men saluted him as commander. After he returned from Spain the fasces had been in the treasury from the end of his year of office until he set out against the pirates. Yes, the rods were birch, you could see that through the gold leaf if you looked carefully. Corinnos of Rhodes had forged and inlaid and chased the axes and carved their handles. Yes, the tassels of the straps were silk, these were the first silk tassels ever put on fasces, before Pompey they had been of wool only. Could these very rods be used for flogging? Indeed they could and had; many a thief or skulker had been cut to ribbons with them; afterwards the blood was washed off and the rods regilded, And could these very axes behead a man? Actually one or another had been used more than once.