The song passed gradually into an elegy, plaintive and full of pain. In the Circus there was silence. After a while Caesar, himself affected, sang on,—
"With the sound of thy heavenly lyre Thou couldst drown the wailing, The lament of hearts. At the sad sound of this song The eye to-day is filled with tears, As a flower is filled with dew, But who can raise from dust and ashes That day of fire, disaster, ruin? O Smintheus, where wert thou then?"
Here his voice quivered and his eyes grew moist. Tears appeared on the lids of the vestals; the people listened in silence before they burst into a long unbroken storm of applause.