The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

Of course it was necessary to receive Malachai, high priest of the Land of Onias, with due ceremony, introduce him to the beaming Mithridates of Pergamum, sit down with both of them and partake of sweet Jewish wine. When a shadow fell in the tent opening, Caesar excused himself and rose, suddenly very tired. "News of little Ptolemy, Rufrius?" "Yes, Caesar. He boarded one of the barges, but the chaos on the riverbank was so frenzied that his puntsmen couldn't push away before the barge became choked with men. Not far down the river, it capsized. The King was among those who drowned." "Do you have his body?" "Yes." Rufrius grinned, his seamed ex-centurion's homely face lighting up like a boy's. "We also have Princess Arsino. She was in the citadel and challenged Carfulenus to a duel, if you'd believe that! Waving her sword around and screaming like Mormolyce." "What splendid news!" said Caesar genially. "Orders, Caesar?" "As soon as I can wriggle out of the formalities in there," Caesar said, nodding toward the tent, "I'm for Alexandria. I'll take the King's body and Princess Arsino with me. You and the good Mithridates can clean up, then follow me with the army."

"Execute her," said Pharaoh from the throne when Caesar presented her with a disheveled Arsino, still in her armor. Apollodorus bowed. "At once, Daughter of Amun-Ra." "Um I am afraid not," said Caesar in apologetic tones. The slight figure on the dais stiffened dangerously. "What do you mean, you're afraid not?" Cleopatra demanded. "Arsino is my captive, Pharaoh, not yours. Therefore, as is Roman custom, she will be sent to Rome to walk in my triumph." "While ever my sister lives, my life is imperiled! I say that she dies today!" "I say she doesn't." "You're a visitor to these shores, Caesar! You do not give commands to the throne of Egypt!" "Rubbish!" said Caesar, annoyed. "I put you on the throne, and I command whoever sits on that expensive piece of furniture while ever I am a visitor to these shores! Attend to your own affairs, Pharaoh bury your brother in the Sema, start rebuilding your city, take a trip to Memphis or Cyrene, nourish the child in your womb. For that matter, marry your remaining brother. You can't rule alone, it's neither Egyptian nor Alexandrian custom for a sovereign to rule alone!" He walked out. She kicked off her towering sandals and ran after him, Pharaonic dignity forgotten, leaving a stunned audience to make what it would of that royal battle of wills. Arsino began to laugh wildly; Apollodorus looked at Charmian and Iras ruefully. "Just as well I didn't summon the Interpreter, the Recorder, the Accountant, the Chief Judge and the Night Commander," the Lord High Chamberlain said. "However, I think we have to let Pharaoh and Caesar sort things out for themselves. And don't laugh, your highness. Your side lost the war you will never be queen in Alexandria. Until Caesar puts you on a Roman ship, you're going to the darkest, most airless dungeon beneath the Sema on bread and water. It is not Roman tradition to execute most of those who walk in a Roman triumph, so no doubt Caesar will free you after his, but be warned, your highness. If you ever return to Egypt, you will die. Your sister will see to that."

"How dare you!" Cleopatra shrilled. "How dare you humiliate Pharaoh in front of the court?" "Then Pharaoh shouldn't be so high-handed, my dear," Caesar said, temper mended, patting his knee. "Before you announce any executions, ask me what I want first. Whether you like it or not, Rome has been a profound presence in Egypt for forty years. When I depart, Rome isn't going to depart too. For one thing, I intend to garrison Alexandria with Roman troops. If you want to continue to reign in Egypt and Alexandria, be politic and crafty, starting with me. That I am your lover and the father of your unborn child are of no significance to me the moment your interests conflict with Rome's." "For Rome, infer Caesar," she said bitterly. "Naturally. Come, sit down and cuddle me. It isn't good for a baby to endure tantrums. He doesn't mind it when we make love, but I'm sure he becomes extremely upset when we quarrel." "You think he's a boy too," she said, unwilling yet to sit on his knee, but softening. "Cha'em and Tach'a convinced me." No sooner had he uttered those words than his whole body jerked. Caesar looked down at himself in amazement, then toppled out of the chair to lie with back arched, arms and legs rigidly extended. Cleopatra screamed for help, tugging at the double crown as she ran to him, heedless of its fate when it flew off and crashed to the floor. By this, Caesar's face had gone a dark purple-blue and his limbs were in convulsion; still screaming, Cleopatra was knocked sprawling when she tried to restrain him. As suddenly as it had come, it was over. Thinking that the lovers were venting their spleen in physical violence, Charmian and Iras had not dared to enter until a certain note in their mistress's cries convinced them that something serious was happening. Then when the two girls added their shrieks to Cleopatra's, Apollodorus, Hapd'efan'e and three priests rushed in to find Caesar lying limply on the floor, breathing slowly and stertorously, his face the grey of extreme illness. "What is it?" Cleopatra asked Hapd'efan'e, down on his knees beside Caesar sniffing at his breath, feeling for a heartbeat. "Did he convulse, Pharaoh?" "Yes, yes!" "Very sweet wine!" the priest-physician barked. "Very sweet wine, and a supple reed that is well hollowed out. Quickly!" While the other priests flew to obey, Charmian and Iras took hold of the howling, terrified Cleopatra, persuaded her to shed some of her pharaonic layers, the plethora of jewels. Apollodorus was roaring that heads were going to fall unless the hollow reed was found, and Caesar, comatose, knew nothing of the horror and terror in every breast what if the ruler of the world should die in Egypt? A priest came running from the mummification annex with the reed, normally used to perfuse the cranial cavity with natron. A snapped question reassured Hapd'efan'e that this reed had never been used. He took it, blew through it to see if it was patent, opened Caesar's mouth, slid the reed inside, stroked his throat, and gently pushed until a foot of it had vanished. Then he carefully trickled the very sweet wine into its lumen too slowly and thinly to cause an air block; not a lot of wine by volume, but the process seemed to last forever. Finally Hapd'efan'e sat back on his heels and waited. When his patient began to stir, the priest plucked the reed out and took Caesar into his arms. "Here," he said when the eyes opened cloudily, "drink this." Within a very few moments Caesar had recovered enough to stand unassisted, walk about and look at all these shocked people. Cleopatra, face smeared and wet with tears, sat staring at him as if he had risen from the dead, Charmian and Iras were bawling, Apollodorus was slumped in a chair with his head between his knees, several priests fluttered and twittered in the background, and all of this consternation apparently was due to him. "What happened?" he asked, going to sit beside Cleopatra, and aware that he did feel rather peculiar. "You had an epileptic fit," Hapd'efan'e said baldly, "but you do not have epilepsy, Caesar. The fact that sweet wine brought you around so quickly tells me that you have suffered a bodily change following that month of rigors. How long is it since you've eaten anything?" "Many hours." His arm curled comfortingly around Cleopatra's shoulders, he gazed up at the thin, dark Egyptian and gave him a dazzling smile, then looked contrite. "The trouble is that when I'm busy I forget to eat." "In future you must keep someone with you to remind you to eat," Hapd'efan'e said severely. "Regular meals will keep this infirmity at bay, but if you do forget to eat, drink sweet wine." "No," said Caesar, grimacing. "Not wine." "Then honey-and-water, or the juice of fruits sweet syrup of some kind. Have your servant keep it on hand, even in the midst of battle. And pay attention to the warning signs nausea, dizziness, faulty vision, faintness, headache, even tiredness. If you feel any of these, have a sweet drink immediately, Caesar." "How did you get an unconscious man to drink, Hapd'efan'e?" Hapd'efan'e held out the reed; Caesar took it and turned it between his fingers. "Through this," he said. "How did you know that you bypassed the airway to my lungs? The two passages are one in front of the other, and the oesophagus is normally closed to permit breathing." "I didn't know for certain," Hapd'efan'e said simply. "I prayed to Sekhmet that your coma wasn't too deep, and stroked the outside of your throat to make you swallow when your gullet felt the pressure of the reed against it. It worked." "You know all that, yet you don't know what's wrong with me?" "Wrongnesses are mysterious, Caesar, beyond us in most cases. All medicine is based upon observation. Luckily I learned much about you when I treated your rigors" he looked sly "that, for instance, you regard having to eat as a waste of time." Cleopatra was improving; her tears had turned to hiccoughs. "How do you know so much about the body?" she asked Caesar. "I'm a soldier. Walk enough battlefields to rescue the wounded and count the dead, and you see everything. Like this excellent physician, I learn from observation." Apollodorus lurched to his feet, wiped away the sweat. "I will see to dinner," he croaked. "Oh, thank every god everywhere in the world that you're all right, Caesar!"

That night, lying sleepless in Cleopatra's enormous goose-down bed, her warmth tucked against him in the mild chill of Alexandria's so-called winter, Caesar thought about the day, the month, the year. From the moment he had set foot on Egyptian soil, everything had drastically altered. Magnus's head that evil palace cabal a kind of corruption and degeneracy that only the East could produce an unwanted campaign fought up and down the streets of a beautiful city the willingness of a people to destroy what had taken three centuries to build his own participation in that destruction . . . And a business proposition from a queen determined to save her people in the only way she believed they could be saved, by conceiving the son of a god. Believing that he, Caesar, was that god. Bizarre. Alien. Today Caesar had had a fright. Today Caesar, who is never ill, faced the inevitable consequences of his fifty-two years. Not merely his years, but how profligately he has used and abused them, pushed himself when other men would stop to rest. No, not Caesar! To rest has never been Caesar's way. Never will be either. But now Caesar, who is never ill, must admit to himself that he has been ill for months. That whatever ague or miasma racked his body with tremors and retches has left a malignancy behind. Some part of Caesar's machine has what did the priest-physician say? suffered a change. Caesar will have to remember to eat, otherwise he will fall in an epilepse, and they will say that Caesar is slipping at last, that Caesar is weakening, that Caesar is no longer unbeatable. So Caesar must keep his secret, must never let Senate and People know that anything is wrong with him. For who else is there to pull Rome out of her mire if Caesar fails? Cleopatra sighed, murmured, gave one faint hiccough so many tears, and all for Caesar! This pathetic little scrap loves me loves me! To her, I have become husband, father, uncle, brother. All the twisted ramifications of a Ptolemy. I didn't understand. I thought I did. But I didn't. Fortuna has thrown the cares and woes of millions of people on her frail shoulders, offered her no choice in her destiny any more than I offered Julia a choice. She is an anointed sovereign in rites older and more sacred than any others, she is the richest woman in the world, she rules human lives absolutely. Yet she's a scrap, a babe. Impossible for a Roman to gauge what the first twenty-one years of her life have done to her murder and incest as a matter of course. Cato and Cicero prate that Caesar hankers to be King of Rome, but neither of them has any concept of what true kingship is. True kingship is as far from me as this little scrap beside me, swollen with my child. Oh, he thought suddenly, I must get up! I must drink some of that syrup Apollodorus so kindly brought juice of melons and grapes grown in linen houses! How degenerate. My mind wanders, I am Caesar and I together, I cannot separate the two. But instead of going to drink his juice of melons and grapes grown in linen houses, his head fell back upon the pillow and turned to look at Cleopatra. It wasn't very dark, for all that it was the middle of the night; the great panels in the outside wall were flexed sideways and light poured in from a full moon, turned her skin not to silver but to pale bronze. Lovely skin. He reached out to touch it, stroke it, feather the palm of his hand down across her six-months belly, not distended enough yet to be luminous, as he remembered Cinnilla's belly when she was close to term with Julia, with Gaius who was stillborn in the midst of her eclampsia. We burned Cinnilla and baby Gaius together, my mother, Aunt Julia, and I. Not Caesar. I. She had budded delicious small breasts, round and firm as globes, and her nipples had darkened to the same plummy black as the skin of her Aethiopian fan bearers; perhaps she has some of that blood, for there's more in her than mere Mithridates and Ptolemy. Beautiful to feel, living tissue that has greater purpose than simply gratifying me. But I am part of it and her, she is carrying my child. Oh, we parent babes too young! Now is the time to relish them, adore their mothers. It takes many years and many heartaches to understand the miracle of life. Her hair was loose and strayed in tendrils across the pillow, not dense and black like Servilia's, nor a river of fire he could wrap himself in like Rhiannon's. This was Cleopatra's hair, just as this was Cleopatra's body. And Cleopatra loves me differently from all the others. She returns me to my youth. The leonine eyes were open, fixed on his face. Another time he would have closed his face immediately, excluded her from his mind with the automatic thoroughness of a reflex never hand women the sword of knowledge, for they will use it to emasculate. But she is used to eunuchs, doesn't prize that kind of man. What she wants from me is a husband, a father, an uncle, a brother. I am her equal in power yet hold the additional power of maleness. I have conquered her. Now I must show her that it is no part of my intentions or compulsions to crush her into submission. None of my women has been a boot scraper. "I love you," he said, gathering her into his arms, "as my wife, my daughter, my mother, my aunt." She couldn't know that he was likening her to real women, not speaking in Ptolemaic comparatives, but she blazed inside with love, relief, utter joy. Caesar had admitted her into his life. Caesar had said he loved her.

The following day he put her atop a donkey and took her to see what six months of war had done to Alexandria. Whole tracts of it lay in ruins, no houses left standing, makeshift hills and walls sporting abandoned artillery, women and children scratching and grubbing for anything edible or useful, homeless and hopeless, clothing reduced to rags. Of the waterfront, almost nothing was left; the fires Caesar had set among the Alexandrian ships had spread to burn every warehouse, what his soldiers had left of the great emporium, the ship sheds, the docks, the quays. "Oh, the book repository has gone!" she cried, wringing her hands, very distressed. "There is no catalogue, we'll never know what burned!" If Caesar eyed her ironically, he said nothing to indicate his wonder at her priorities; she hadn't been moved by the heart-wrenching spectacle of all those starving women and children, now she was on the verge of tears over books. "But the library is in the museum," he said, "and the museum is perfectly safe." "Yes, but the librarians are so slow that the books come in far faster than they can be catalogued, so for the last hundred years they've been piling up in a special warehouse. It's gone!" "How many books are there in the museum?" he asked. "Almost a million." "Then there's very little to worry about," Caesar said. "Do cheer up, my dear! The sum total of all the books ever written is far less than a million, which means whatever was stored in the warehouse were duplicates or recent works. Many of the books in the museum itself must be duplicates too. Recent works are easy to get hold of, and if you need a catalogue, Mithridates of Pergamum has a library of a quarter-million books, most of fairly recent date. All you have to do is commission copies of works the museum doesn't have from Sosius or Atticus in Rome. They don't have the books in ownership, but they borrow from Varro, Lucius Piso, me, others who have extensive private libraries. Which reminds me that Rome has no public library, and I must remedy that." Onward. The agora had suffered the least damage among the public buildings, some of its pillars dismantled to stop up the archways in the Heptastadion, but its walls were intact, as well as most of the arcade roofing. The gymnasium, however, was little more than a few foundations, and the courts of justice had entirely vanished. The beautiful Hill of Pan was denuded of vegetation, its streams and waterfalls dried up, their beds encrusted with salt, Roman artillery perched anywhere the ground was level. No temple had survived intact, but Caesar was pleased to see that none had lost its sculptures and paintings, even if they were stained and smirched. The Serapeum in Rhakotis had suffered least, thanks to its distance from Royal Avenue. However, three massive beams were gone from the main temple, and the roof had caved in. "Yet Serapis is perfect," Caesar said, scrambling over the mounds of masonry. For there he sat upon his jeweled golden throne, a Zeus-like figure, full-bearded and long-haired, with the three-headed dog Cerberus crouched at his feet, and his head weighed down by a gigantic crown in the form of a basket. "It's very good," he said, studying Serapis. "Not up to Phidias or Praxiteles or Myron, but very good. Who did it?" "Bryaxis," said Cleopatra, lips tight. She looked around at the wreckage, remembering the vast, beautifully proportioned building on its high podium of many steps, the Ionic columns all bravely painted and gilded, the metopes and pediment veritable masterpieces. Only Serapis himself had survived. Is it that Caesar has seen so many sacked cities, so many charred ruins, so much havoc? This destruction seems to leave him quite composed, though he and his men have done most of it. My people confined themselves to ordinary houses, hovels and slums, things that are not important. "Well," she said as he and his lictors escorted her back to the un-marred Royal Enclosure, "I shall scrape up every talent of gold and silver I can find to rebuild the temples, the gymnasium, the agora, the courts of justice, all the public buildings." His hand holding the donkey's halter jerked; the animal stopped, its long-lashed eyes blinking. "That's very laudable," he said, voice hard, "but you don't start with the ornaments. The first thing you spend your money on is food for those left alive in this desolation. The second thing you spend your money on is clearance of the ruins. The third thing you spend your money on are new houses for the ordinary people, including the poor. Only when Alexandria's people are served can you spend money on the public buildings and temples." Her mouth opened to rail at him, but before she could speak her outrage, she encountered his eyes. Oh, Creator Ptah! He is a God, mighty and terrible! "I can tell you," he went on, "that most of the people killed in this war were Macedonians and Macedonian-Greeks. Perhaps a hundred thousand. So you still have almost three million people to care for people whose dwellings and jobs have perished. I wish you could see that you have a golden opportunity to endear yourself to the bulk of your Alexandrian people. Rome hasn't suffered reduction to ruins since she became a power, nor are her common people neglected. You Ptolemies and your Macedonian masters have run a place far bigger than Rome to suit yourselves, there has been no spirit of philanthropy. That has to change, or the mob will return more angry than ever." "You're saying," she said, pricked and confused, "that we at the top of the tower have not acquitted ourselves like a true government. You harp on our indifference to the lowly, the fact that it has never been our habit to fill their bellies at our expense, or extend the citizenship to all who live here. But Rome isn't perfect either. It's just that Rome has an empire, she can squeeze prosperity for her own lowly by exploiting her provinces. Egypt has no provinces. Those it did have, Rome took from it for her own needs. As for yourself, Caesar your career has been a bloody one that ill equips you to sit in judgement on Egypt." The hand tugged the halter; the donkey started walking. "In my day," he said in ordinary tones, "I have rendered half a million people homeless. Four hundred thousand women and children have died because of me. I have killed more than a million men on my fields of battle. I have amputated hands. I have sold a million more men, women and children into slavery. But all that I have done has been done in the knowledge that first I made treaties, tried conciliation, kept my end of the bargains. And when I have destroyed, what I have left behind will benefit future generations in far greater measure than the damage I did, the lives I ended or ruined." His voice didn't increase in volume, but it became stronger. "Do you think, Cleopatra, that I don't see in my mind's eye the sum total of the devastation and upheaval I've caused? Do you think I don't grieve? Do you think that I look back on all of it and look forward to more of it without sorrow? Without pain? Without regret? Then you mistake me. The remembrance of cruelty is poor comfort in old age, but I have it on excellent authority that I will not live to be old. I say again, Pharaoh, rule your subjects with love, and never forget that it is only an accident of birth that makes you different from one of those women picking through the debris of this shattered city. You deem it Amun-Ra who put you in your skin. I know it was an accident of fate." Her mouth was open; she put up her hand to shield it and looked straight between the donkey's ears, determined not to weep. So he believes that he will not live to be old, and is glad of it. But now I understand that I will never truly know him. What he is telling me is that everything he has ever done was a conscious decision, made in full knowledge of the consequences, including to himself. I will never have that kind of strength or perception or ruthlessness. I doubt anyone ever has.

A nundinum later Caesar called an informal conference in the big room he used as a study. Cleopatra and Apollodorus were there, together with Hapd'efan'e and Mithridates of Pergamum. There were Romans present: Publius Rufrius, Carfulenus of the Sixth, Lamius of the Fortieth, Fabricius of the Twenty-seventh, Macrinus of the Thirty-seventh, Caesar's lictor Fabius, his secretary Faberius, and his personal legate, Gaius Trebatius Testa. "It is the beginning of April," he announced, looking very fit and well, every inch Caesar, "and reports from Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus in Asia Province have informed me that Pharnaces has gone back to Cimmeria to deal with his erring son, who has decided not to submit to tata without a fight. So matters in Anatolia lie dormant for at least the next three or four months. Besides, all the mountain passes to Pontus and Armenia Parva will be choked with snow until the middle of Sextilis oh, how I hate the discrepancy between the calendar and the seasons! In that respect, Pharaoh, Egypt is right. You based your calendar on the sun, not on the moon, and I intend to have speech with your astronomers." He drew a breath and returned to his subject. "There is no doubt in my mind that Pharnaces will return, however, so I will plan my future actions with that in mind. Calvinus is busy recruiting and training, and Deiotarus is extremely eager to atone for being in Pompeius Magnus's clientele. As for Ariobarzanes" he grinned "Cappadocia will always be Cappadocia. We'll get no joy from him, but nor will Pharnaces. I've told Calvinus to send for some of the Republican legions I returned to Italy with my own veterans, so when the time comes, we should be well prepared. It's to our advantage that Pharnaces is bound to lose some of his best soldiers fighting Asander in Cimmeria." He leaned forward in his curule chair, eyes roaming the row of intent faces. "Those of us who have been marooned in Alexandria for the last six months have fought a particularly enervating campaign, and all troops are entitled to a winter rest camp. Therefore I intend to stay in Egypt for two more months, as long a winter camp as events allow. With Pharaoh's permission and co-operation, I am going to send my men to winter camp near Memphis, far enough away from Alexandria to permit of no memories. There are tourist attractions galore, and the issue of pay will give the men money to spend. Also, I am arranging to have Alexandria's surplus daughters shipped to the camp. So many potential husbands have died that the city will be burdened by too many women for years to come, and there is method in this provision. I do not intend these girls as whores, but as wives. The Twenty-seventh, the Thirty-seventh and the Fortieth are going to remain to garrison Alexandria for long enough to establish homes and families. I am afraid that the Sixth will not be able to form permanent liaisons." Fabricius, Lamius and Macrinus looked at one another, not sure whether they welcomed this news. Decimus Carfulenus of the Sixth sat impassively. "It is essential that Alexandria remains quiet," Caesar went on. "As time passes, more and more of Rome's legions will find themselves posted to garrison duty rather than active service. Which isn't to say that garrison duty consists of idleness. We all remember what happened to the Gabiniani whom Aulus Gabinius left behind to garrison Alexandria after Auletes was restored to his throne. They went native with a vengeance, and murdered the sons of Bibulus rather than return to active duty in Syria. The Queen dealt with that crisis, but it mustn't happen again. Those legions left in Egypt will conduct themselves as a professional army, keep up their soldier skills, and hold themselves ready to march at Rome's command. But men stranded in foreign places without a home life are discontented at first, then disaffected. What cannot happen is that they steal women from the people of Memphis. Therefore they will espouse the surplus Alexandrian women and as Gaius Marius always said spread Roman ways, Roman ideals and the Latin language through their children." The cool eyes surveyed the three centurions concerned, each primipilus of his legion; Caesar never bothered with legates or military tribunes, who were noblemen and transient. Centurions were the backbone of the army, its only full-time officers. "Fabricius, Macrinus, Lamius, those are your orders. Remain in Alexandria and guard it well." No use complaining. It might have been a lot worse, like one of Caesar's thousand-mile marches in thirty days. "Yes, Caesar," said Fabricius, acting as spokesman. "Publius Rufrius, you too will remain here. You'll have the high command as legatus propraetore." News that delighted Rufrius; he already had an Alexandrian wife, she was with child, and he hadn't wanted to leave her. "Decimus Carfulenus, the Sixth will go with me when I march for Anatolia," Caesar said. "I'm sorry you won't have a permanent home, but you boys have been with me ever since I borrowed you from Pompeius Magnus all those years ago, and I prize you the more for being loyal to Pompeius after he took you back. I will plump your numbers out with other veterans as I go north. In the absence of the Tenth, the Sixth is my private command." Carfulenus's beam revealed his two missing teeth, screwed up the scar he bore from one cheek to the other across a kind of a nose. His action in taking Ptolemy's citadel had saved a whole legion of troops pinned down by that cross fire, so he had received the corona civica when the army had been paraded for decorations, and, like Caesar, he was entitled to enter the Senate under Sulla's provisions for winners of major crowns. "The Sixth is deeply honored, Caesar. We are your men to the death." "As for you lot," Caesar said affably to his chief lictor and his secretary, "you're permanent fixtures. Where I go, you go. However, Gaius Trebatius, I don't require any further duty from you that might handicap your noble status and your public career." Trebatius sighed, remembering those awful walks in Portus Itius's extreme humidity because the General forbade his legates and tribunes to ride, remembering the taste of a Menapian roast goose, remembering those dreadful gallops in a pitching gig taking down notes while his pampered stomach heaved oh, for Rome and litters, Baiae oysters, Arpinate cheeses, Falernian wine! "Well, Caesar, as I imagine that sooner or later your path will take you to Rome, I shall defer my career decisions until that day comes," he said heroically. Caesar's eyes twinkled. "Perhaps," he said gently, "you'll find the menu in Memphis more appealing. You've grown too thin." He folded his hands in his lap and nodded briskly. "The Roman element is dismissed." They filed out, the babble of their talk in full spate even as Fabius closed the door. "You first, I think, good friend Mithridates," Caesar said, relaxing his pose. "You are the son and Cleopatra the granddaughter of Mithridates the Great, which makes you her uncle. If, say, you were to send for your wife and younger children, would you stay in Alexandria to supervise its rebuilding? Cleopatra tells me she will have to import an architect, and you're justly famous for what you've done down on the sea plain below Pergamum's acropolis." His face took on a wistful look. "I remember that sea plain very well. I used it to crucify five hundred pirates, much to the governor's displeasure when he found out. But these days it's a picture of walks, arcades, gardens, beautiful public buildings." Mithridates frowned. A vigorous man of fifty, the child of a concubine rather than a wife, he took after his mighty father heavyset, muscular, tall, yellow-haired and yellow-eyed. He followed Roman fashion in that he cropped his hair very short and was clean-shaven, but his garb tended more to the Oriental he had a weakness for gold thread, plush embroidery and every shade of purple known to the dyers of murex. All foibles to be tolerated in such a loyal client, first of Pompey's, now of Caesar's. "Frankly, Caesar, I would love to do it, but can you spare me? Surely with Pharnaces lurking, I am needed in my own lands." Caesar shook his head emphatically. "Pharnaces won't get as far as Asia Province's borders, let alone Pergamum. I'll stop him in Pontus. From what Calvinus says, your son is an excellent regent in your absence, so take a long holiday from government, do! Your blood ties to Cleopatra will make you acceptable to the Alexandrians, and I note you've forged very strong links with the Jews. The skills of Alexandria repose with the Jews and Metics, and the latter will accept you because the Jews do." "Then yes, Caesar." "Good." Having gotten his way, the ruler of the world gave Mithridates of Pergamum the nod of dismissal. "Thank you." "And I thank you," said Cleopatra when her uncle had gone. An uncle! How amazing! Why, I must have a thousand relatives through my mother! Pharnaces is my uncle too! And through Rhodogune and Apama, I go back to Cambyses and Darius of Persia! Both once Pharaoh! In me, whole dynasties connect. What blood my son will have! Caesar was speaking to her about Hapd'efan'e, whom he wanted to take with him as his personal physician. "I'd ask the poor fellow for myself," he said in Latin, which Cleopatra now spoke very well, "except that I've been in Egypt long enough to know that few people are genuinely free. Just the Macedonians. I daresay that Cha'em owns him, since he's a priest-physician of Ptah's consort, Sekhmet, and he seems to live in Ptah's precinct. But as you at least part-own Cha'em, he'll do as you say, no doubt. I need Hapd'efan'e, Cleopatra. Now that Lucius Tuccius is dead he was Sulla's physician, then mine I don't trust any physician practicing in Rome. If he has a wife and family, I'll happily carry them along as well." Something she could do for him! "Hapd'efan'e, Caesar wants to take you with him when he goes," she said to the priest in the old tongue. "It would please Creator Ptah and Pharaoh if you consent to go. We in Egypt would have your thoughts as a channel to Caesar no matter where he might be. Answer him for yourself, and tell him about your situation. He's concerned for you." The priest-physician sat with impassive face, his black, almond-shaped eyes fixed on Caesar unblinkingly. "God Caesar," he said in his clumsy Greek, "it is clearly Creator Ptah's wish that I serve you. I will do that willingly. I am hem-netjer-sinw, so I am sworn to celibacy." A gleam of humor showed in the eyes. "However, I would like to extend my treatment of you to include certain Egyptian methods that Greek physicians dismiss amulets and charms possess great magic, so do spells." "Absolutely!" Caesar cried, excited. "As Pontifex Maximus, I know all the Roman charms and spells we can compare notes. I quite agree, they have great magic." His face became grave. "We have to clear one thing up, Hapd'efan'e. No 'god Caesar' and no falling to the floor to greet me! Elsewhere in the world I am not a god, and it would offend others if you called me one." "As you wish, Caesar." In truth, this shaven-headed, still young man was delighted with the new turn in his life, for he had a natural curiosity about the world, and looked forward to seeing strange places in the company of a man he literally worshiped. Distance couldn't separate him from Creator Ptah and his wife, Sekhmet, their son Nefertem of the Lotus. He could wing his thoughts to Memphis from anywhere in the time it took a ray of sun to travel across the sacred pylon gates. So, while the talk between Caesar and Cleopatra proceeded in Greek too fast for him to follow, he mentally planned his equipment a whole dozen carefully packed supple, hollowed reeds to start with, his forceps, trephines, knives, trocars, needles . .. "What about the city officials?" Caesar was asking. "The present lot have been banished," Apollodorus answered, "I put them on a ship for Macedonia. When I arrived with the new Royal Guard, I found the Recorder trying to burn all the bylaws and ordinances, and the Accountant trying to burn the ledgers. Luckily I was in time to prevent both. The city treasury is beneath the Serapeum, and the city offices are a part of the precinct. All survived the war." "New men? How were the old chosen?" "By sortition among the high Macedonians, most of whom have perished or fled." "Sortition? You mean they cast lots for the positions?" "Yes, Caesar, sortition. The lots are rigged, of course." "Well, that's cheaper than holding elections, which is the Roman way. So what happens now?" Cleopatra spoke. "We reorganize," she said firmly. "I intend to ban sortition and hold elections instead. If the million new citizens vote for a selection of candidates, it will reassure them that they do have a say." "That surely depends on the selection of candidates. Do you intend to let all who declare themselves candidates stand?" Her lids dropped, she looked cagey. "I haven't decided on the selection process yet," she hedged. "Don't you think the Greeks will feel left out if the Jews and Metics become citizens? Why not enfranchise everybody, even your hybrid Egyptians? Call them your Head Count and limit their voting powers if you must, but allow them the simple citizenship." But that, her face told him, was going way too far. "Thank you, Apollodorus, Hapd'efan'e, you may go," he said, stifling a sigh.

"So we are alone," said Cleopatra, pulling him out of his chair and down beside her on a couch. "Am I doing well? I'm spending my money as you directed the poor are being fed and the rubble cleared away. Every common builder has been contracted to erect ordinary houses. There is money enough to start the public building too because I've taken my own funds from the treasure vaults for that." The big yellow eyes glowed. "You are right, it is the way to be loved. Every day I set out with Apollodorus on my donkey to see the people, comfort them. Does this win your favor? Am I ruling in a more enlightened way?" "Yes, but you have a long way to go. When you tell me that you've enfranchised all your people, you'll be there. You have a natural autocracy, but you're not observant enough. Take the Jews, for example. They're quarrelsome, but they have ability. Treat them with respect, always be good to them. In hard times they'll be your greatest support." "Yes, yes," she said impatiently, tired of seriousness. "I have something else I want to talk about, my love." His eyes crinkled at their corners. "Indeed?" "Yes, indeed. I know what we're going to do with our two months, Caesar." "If the winds were with me, I'd go to Rome." "Well, they're not, so we're going to sail down Nilus to the First Cataract." She patted her belly. "Pharaoh must show the people that she is fruitful." He frowned. "I agree that Pharaoh must, but I ought to stay here on Our Sea and try to keep abreast of events elsewhere." "I refuse to listen!" she cried. "I don't care about events around Your Sea! You and I are setting out on Ptolemy Philopator's barge to see the real Egypt Egypt of Nilus!" "I dislike being pushed, Cleopatra." "It's for your health, you stupid man! Hapd'efan'e says you need a proper rest, not a continuation of duty. And what greater rest can there be than a a cruise? Please, I beg of you, grant me this! Caesar, a woman needs memories of an idyll with her beloved! We've had no idyll, and while ever you think of yourself as Caesar Dictator, we can't. Please! Please?"

4

Ptolemy Philopator, the fourth of those who bore the first name of Ptolemy, hadn't been one of the more vigorous sovereigns of his house; he left Egypt only two tangible legacies: the two biggest ships ever built. One was seagoing and measured 426 feet in length and 60 feet in the beam. It had six banks of oars and forty men to each bank. The other was a river barge, shallower in the draft and having but two banks of oars, ten men to each oar, and measured 350 feet in length and 40 feet in the beam. Philopator's river barge had been put away in a ship shed on the riverbank not far above Memphis, lovingly cared for during the hundred and sixty years since its construction wetted and oiled, polished, constantly repaired, and used whenever Pharaoh sailed the river. The Nilus Philopator, as Cleopatra called it, contained huge rooms, baths, an arcade of columns on the deck to join the stern and bow reception rooms, one for audiences, the other for banquets. Below deck and above the oar banks were Pharaoh's private quarters and accommodation for a multitude of servants. Cooking on board was limited to a screened-off area of braziers; the preparation of full meals was done ashore, for the great vessel cruised along at about the same speed as a marching legionary, and scores of servants followed it on the east bank; the west bank was the realm of the dead and of temples. It was inlaid with gold, electrum, ivory, exquisite marquetry and the finest cabinet woods from all over the world, including citrus wood from the Atlas Mountains of the most wonderful grain Caesar had ever seen no small opinion, when wealthy Romans had made the collection of citrus wood an art. Pedestals were made of chryselephantine a mixture of gold and ivory the statuary was Praxiteles, Myron, even Phidias, there were paintings by Zeuxis and Parrhasius, Pausias and Nicias, and tapestries of such richness that they vied with the paintings for reality of detail. The rugs which lay everywhere were Persian, the draperies of transparent linen dyed whatever colors were appropriate for the room. Finally, old friend Crassus, thought Caesar, I believe your tales of the incredible wealth of Egypt. What a pity you can't be here to see this! A ship for a god on earth. Progress down the river was by Tyrian purple sail, for the wind in Egypt always blew from the north; then, returning, oar power was assisted by the strong river current, flowing north to Our Sea. Not that he ever saw the oarsmen, had no idea what race they were, how they were treated; oarsmen everywhere were free men with professional status, but Egypt wasn't a place of free men. Every evening before sunset the Nilus Philopator tied up to the east bank at some royal wharf no other riverboat was allowed to contaminate. He had thought to be bored, but he never was. River traffic was constant and colorful, hundreds of lateen-sailed dhows plying cargoes of food, goods brought overland from the Red Sea ports, great earthenware jars of pumpkin, saffron, sesame and linseed oils, boxes of dates, live animals, the floating shops of bumboats. All of it ruthlessly supervised by the swifter ships of the river police, who were everywhere. It was easier to understand the phenomenon of the Cubits now he sailed Nilus, for the banks were seventeen feet high at their lowest, thirty-two feet high at their tallest; if the river didn't rise higher than the lowest banks, flooding wasn't possible, yet if it rose higher than the tallest banks, the water poured over the valley in an uncontrollable spate, washed away villages, ruined the seed grain, took far too long to recede. The colors were dramatic, sky and river a flawless blue, the distant cliffs that denoted the beginning of the desert plateau all shades from pale straw to deep crimson; the vegetation of the valley itself was every green imaginable. At this time of year, mid-winter by the seasons, the floodwaters of the Inundation had fully receded and the crops were sprouting like sheets of lush, rippling grass, hurtling on toward the earing and harvesting of spring. Caesar had imagined that no trees grew, but saw in surprise that there were whole groves of trees, sometimes small forests the fruiting persea, a local sycamore, black-thorn, oak, figs and that palms of all kinds grew besides the famous date. At about the place where the southern half of Upper Egypt became the northern half of Upper Egypt, Nilus gave off an anabranch that ran north to Lake Moeris and formed the land of Ta-she, rich enough to grow two crops of wheat and barley a year; an early Ptolemy had dug a big canal from the lake back to Nilus, so that the water continued to flow. Everything throughout the thousand-mile length of Egyptian Nilus was irrigated; Cleopatra explained that even when Nilus failed to inundate, the people of the valley could manage to feed themselves by irrigating; it was Alexandria caused the famines three million mouths to feed, more mouths than in the whole of Nilus's length. The cliffs and the desert plateau were the Red Land; the valley, with its deep, dark, perpetually replenished soil, was the Black Land. There were innumerable temples on both banks, all built on the same vast lines: a series of massive pylons connected by lintels above gateways; walls; courtyards; more pylons and gates farther in; always leading to the Holy of Holies, a small room where light was artificially guided in to appear magical, and there in it stood some beast-headed Egyptian god, or perhaps a statue of one of the great pharaohs, usually Rameses II, a famous builder. The temples were often faced with statues of a pharaoh, and the pylons were always joined by avenues of sphinxes, ram-headed, lion-headed, human-headed. All were covered in two-dimensional pictures of people, plants, animals, and painted in every color; the Egyptians loved color. "Most of the Ptolemies have built, repaired or finished our temples," said Cleopatra as they wandered the wonderful maze of Abydos. "Even my father Auletes built extensively he wanted so badly to be pharaoh! You see, when Cambyses of Persia invaded Egypt five hundred years ago, he considered the temples and the pyramid tombs sacrilegious, and mutilated them, sometimes quite destroyed them. So there's plenty of work for us Ptolemies, who were the first after the true Egyptians to care. I've laid the foundations of a new temple to Hathor, but I want our son to join me as its builder. He's going to be the greatest temple builder in Egypt's entire history." "Why, when the Ptolemies are so Hellenized, have they built exactly as the old Egyptians did? You even use the hieroglyphs instead of writing in Greek." "Probably because most of us have been Pharaoh, and certainly because the priests are so rooted in antiquity. They provide the architects, sculptors and painters, sometimes even in Alexandria. But wait until you see the temple of Isis at Philae! There we did slightly Hellenize which is why, I think, it's generally held to be the most beautiful temple complex in all Egypt."

The river itself teemed with fish, including the oxyrhynchus, a thousand-pound monster which had a town named after it; the people ate fish, both fresh and smoked, as a meat staple. Bass, carp and perch abounded, and much to Caesar's amazement, dolphins streaked and gamboled, avoiding the predatory crocodiles with an almost contemptuous ease. Many different animals were sacred, sometimes limited to a single town, sometimes universally revered. The sight of Suchis, a gigantic sacred crocodile, being force-fed honey cakes, roast meat and sweet wine had Caesar in fits of laughter. The thirty-foot-long creature was so tired of food that it would try to evade its priest feeders, to no avail; they would jack its jaws open and ram more food down while it groaned and sighed. He saw the Buchis Bull, the Apis Bull, their mothers, the temple complexes in which they lived out their pampered lives. The sacred bulls, their mothers, ibises and cats were mummified when they died, and laid to rest in vast underground tunnels and chambers. The cats and ibises were oddly sad to Caesar's foreign eyes little amber parceled figures by the hundreds of thousands, dry as paper, stiff, immobile, while their spirits roamed the Realm of the Dead. In fact, thought Caesar as the Nilus Philopator drew closer and closer to the most southern regions of Upper Egypt, it is no wonder that these people have made their gods part-human and part-animal, for Nilus is its own world, and animals are perfectly fused into the human cycle. Crocodile, hippopotamus and jackal are fearsome beasts crocodile lurks waiting to snatch an imprudent fisherman or dog or child, hippopotamus lumbers ashore to destroy food plants with its mouth and huge trotters, jackal sneaks into houses and steals babies, cats. Therefore Sobek, Taweret and Anubis are malign gods. Whereas Bastet the cat eats rats and mice, Horus the hawk does the same, Thoth the ibis eats insect pests, Hathor the cow provides meat, milk and labor, Khnum the ram sires sheep for meat, milk and wool. To Egyptians, pent up in their narrow valley and sustained only by their river, gods must naturally be as much animal as human. Here, they understand that Man too is an animal. And Amun-Ra, the sun, shines every single day of the year; to us, the moon means rain or the women's cycle or changes of mood, whereas to them, the moon is just a part of Nut, the night sky that gave birth to the land. As for imagining their gods as we Romans do, forces that create pathways to link two different universes no, they do not live in that kind of world. Here, it is sun, sky, river, human and animal. A cosmology containing no abstract concepts.

Fascinating to see the place where Nilus flowed out of its endless red canyon to become Egypt's river; in sere Nubia it watered nothing, flowing between vast rock walls, said Cleopatra. "Nilus receives two branches in Aithiopai, where he is kind again," she explained. "These two branches collect the summer rains and are the Inundation, whereas Nilus himself flows down past Meroe and the exiled queens of the Sembritae, who once ruled in Egypt they are so fat that they can't walk. Nilus himself is fed by rains that fall all year round somewhere far past Meroe, which is why he doesn't dry up in winter." They inspected the first Nilometer at the isle of Elephantine on the little cataract, were taken upriver to the First Cataract itself, a place of roaring white waters and precipices. Then it was on south to the wells of Syene, where on the longest day of the year the sun at noon shone right down into the wells and saw his face reflected in the water far below. "Yes, I've read my Eratosthenes," Caesar said. "Here at Syene the sun halts its northward course and starts to go south again. Eratosthenes called it the Tropic because it marked the turning point. A very remarkable man. As I remember, he blamed geometry and trigonometry on Egypt too generations of little boys like me have wrestled their teachers and Euclid all because the Inundation obliterates the boundary stones of Egypt every single year, hence the Egyptian invention of surveying." "Yes, but don't forget that it was the nosy Greeks who wrote it all down!" laughed Cleopatra, well schooled in mathematics.

* * *

The cruise was as much a discovery of Cleopatra as of Egypt. Nowhere in the world of Our Sea or the Parthians did a monarch receive the kind of absolute worship Pharaoh did as a matter of course rather than as a right or a reflex evoked by terror. The people flocked to the riverbank to throw flowers at the mighty barge sliding along, to prostrate themselves, rise and fall in one obeisance after another, to call her name. Pharaoh had blessed them with her divine presence, and the Inundation had been perfect. Whenever she could, she would mount a dais on the deck to raise herself high enough and acknowledge her subjects very gravely, standing in profile so that they could see her pregnant belly. In every town she was sure to be there, the white crown of Upper Egypt on her head, the barge surrounded by rush canoes, little earthenware coracles and hide fishing boats, the deck sometimes awash in flowers. Though by now she was into her third trimester and not as comfortable or blooming as she had been during her second, her own needs did not matter. Pharaoh was all-important. Despite the constant interruptions, they talked a great deal. This was a bigger pleasure for Caesar than for Cleopatra; his unwillingness to discuss just those aspects of his life she was on fire to learn about irked her, irked her, irked her. She wanted to know all the details of his relationship with Servilia (the whole world speculated about that!), his years-long marriage to a woman he had hardly cohabited with, the succession of broken-hearted women he had abandoned after he'd seduced them merely to cuckold their husbands, his political enemies. Oh, so many mysteries! Mysteries he refused to talk about, though he lectured her interminably on the art of ruling, from law to war, or would launch into fascinating stories about the Druids of Gaul, the lake temples at Tolosa and their cargo of gold a Servilius Caepio had stolen, the customs and traditions of half a hundred different peoples. As long as the subjects were not intimately personal, he was happy to talk. But the moment she started to fish in his emotional waters, he closed up.

Not unnaturally, Cleopatra left the precinct of Ptah until the end of their return journey north. Caesar had seen the pyramids from the barge, but now, mounted on a horse, he was conducted to the fields by Cha'em. Cleopatra, growing very heavy, declined to go. "Cambyses of Persia tried to deface the outer polished stones, but became bored by chipping away and concentrated his destruction on temples," said Cha'em, "which is why so many of them are almost pristine." "For the life of me, Cha'em, I cannot understand why a living man, even one who was a god, would devote so much time and toil to a structure of no use to him during life," Caesar said, genuinely puzzled. "Well," Cha'em answered, smiling subtly, "you must remember that Khufu and the rest didn't do the actual work. Perhaps they came occasionally to see progress, but it never went further than that. And the builders were very skilled. There are about two million large stones in Khufu's mer, but most of the construction was done during the Inundation, when barges could bring the blocks to the bottom of the ramps up on to the plateau, and labor was not required in the fields. During planting and harvesting seasons, large-scale work virtually stopped. The polished outer casing is limestone, but once the top of each mer was sheathed in gold plundered, alas, by the foreign dynasties. The tombs inside were broken into at the same period, so all the treasures are gone." "Where then is the treasure of the living Pharaoh?" "Would you like to see it?" "Very much." Caesar hesitated, then spoke. "You must understand, Cha'em, that I am not here to loot Egypt. Whatever Egypt has will go to my son or to my daughter, for that matter." He hunched his shoulders. "I can't be happy at the thought that in time to come my son might marry my daughter incest is anathema to Romans. Though, oddly enough, I notice from overhearing what my soldiers say that Egypt's so-called beast gods upset them more than incest does." "But you yourself understand our 'beast gods' I see it in your eyes." Cha'em turned his donkey. "Now to the vaults." Rameses II had built much of the half-square-mile of Ptah's precinct, approached through a long avenue of magnificent ram-headed sphinxes, and had flanked its west pylons with colossal statues of himself, meticulously painted. No one, Caesar decided, even he, would ever have found the entrance to the treasure vaults without prior knowledge. Cha'em led him through a series of passageways to an interior room where painted, life-size statues of the Triad of Memphis stood in ghostly illumination. Ptah the Creator himself stood in the middle, shaven-headed, with a real skullcap of worked gold fitted tightly on his cranium. He was wrapped in mummy bandages from feet to neck save that his hands protruded to hold a staff on which were a terraced pillar, a large bronze ankh a T-shaped object surmounted by a loop and the crook of a scepter. To his right was his wife, Sekhmet, who had the body of a well-shaped woman but the head of a nemes-maned lion, with the disc of Ra and the cobra uraeus above the mane. On Ptah's left was their son, Nefertem, Guardian of the Two Ladies and Lord of the Lotus, a man wearing a tall blue lotus crown flanked on either side by a plume of white ostrich feathers. Cha'em tugged at Ptah's staff and detached the ankh with the crook atop it, handed the very heavy object to Caesar, then turned and left the chamber to retrace the path from the outer pylons. On a nondescript section of corridor he stopped, knelt down and pushed with both palms on a cartouche just above the level of the floor; it sprang forward just enough for Cha'em to lever it free of the wall. Then he extended one hand and took the ankh from Caesar, inserted its blunt end into the space. "We thought about this for a very long time," he said as he began to wind the ankh back and forth, using the crook on its end to apply considerable force. "Tomb robbers know all the tricks, so how to fool them? In the end we settled for a simple device and a subtle location. If you count all the corridors, they amount to many, many cubits. And this is just another corridor." He grunted with the effort, his words suddenly almost drowned by a groaning grinding. "The story of Rameses the Great unfolds along each wall, the cartouches of his many sons among the hieroglyphs and pictures. And the paving why, it is like all the other paving." Startled, Caesar looked to the source of the noise in time to see a granite flag in the center of the floor rise above the level of its neighbors. "Help me," Cha'em said, abandoning the ankh, which remained protruding from the base of the wall. Caesar knelt and lifted the flag clear of those around it, stared down into darkness. There was a pattern to the floor that enabled the pair of them to lift other, smaller flags around the middle one; they rested on two sides, the other two without any support, and when they were removed the hole in the floor was big enough for quite large objects to be passed through it. "Help me," Cha'em said again, taking hold of a bronze rod with a flaring top in which the center flag had engaged. It screwed free to permit of no impediment below, a rod some five feet in length. With an agile wriggle, Cha'em inserted himself into the hole, fiddled about and produced two torches. "Now," he said, emerging, "we go to the sacred fire and kindle them, for the vaults have no source of light whatsoever." "Is there air enough for them to burn?" Caesar asked as they made their way to the fire in the Holy of Holies, a tiny room in which stood a seated statue of Rameses. "As long as the flags are up, yes, provided we do not go too far. Were this designed to remove treasure, I would have other priests with me, and rig up a bellows to force air inside." Torches burning sluggishly, they descended into the bowels of the earth beneath Ptah's sanctuary, down a flight of steps and into an antechamber which led into a maze of tunnels with small rooms opening off them rooms filled with gold sows, chests of gems and pearls of every color and kind, rooms redolent with barks, spices, incenses, rooms of laserpicium and balsam, rooms stacked with elephant tusks, rooms of porphyry, alabaster, rock crystal, malachite, lapis lazuli, rooms of ebony wood, of citrus wood, of electrum, of gold coins. But no statues or paintings or what Caesar would have called works of art. Caesar returned to the ordinary world with mind reeling; inside the vaults lay so much wealth that even the seventy treasure fortresses of Mithridates the Great paled into insignificance. It is true, what Marcus Crassus always said: that we of the western world have no idea of how much treasure Orientals accumulate, for we do not value it for its own sake. Of itself it is useless, which is why it lies here. Were it mine, I would melt the metals down and sell the jewels to fund a more prosperous economy. Whereas Marcus Crassus would have prowled, just looking at it, and crooned. No doubt it started as a nest egg, and hatched into a monster necessitating supreme guile to safeguard it. Back in the corridor, they screwed the rod into its base five feet below and released the trip that had jacked the center slab upward; they then replaced the surrounding flags, and eased the center one into place, flush with the floor again. Caesar gazed up and down the paving, couldn't see the entrance no matter how hard he looked. An experimental stamp of his foot produced no hollow sound, for the flags were four inches thick. "If one looks closely at the cartouche," he said as Cha'em replaced the ankh and scepter on Ptah's staff, "one would see that it has been tampered with." "Not tomorrow," Cha'em said tranquilly. "It will be plastered, painted and aged to look exactly like the hundred others." Once when a very young man, Caesar had been captured by pirates, who were secure enough in the anonymity of their Lycian cove to let him remain on deck as they sailed; but he had beaten them, counted the coves and returned to capture them after he was released on payment of a ransom. Just as with the treasure vaults. He had counted the cartouches between Ptah's sanctuary and the one that sprang free of the wall when pressed. It is one thing, he thought, following Cha'em into the daylight, not to know a secret, but quite another to be privy to the secret. To find the treasure vaults, robbers would have to tear the whole of the temple apart; but Caesar had had the opportunity to do a simple exercise in counting. Not that he had any intention of plundering what would one day belong to his son; only that a thinking man will always seize his chances.

5

At the end of May they were back in Alexandria to find the rubble entirely cleared away, and new houses going up everywhere. Mithridates of Pergamum had shifted himself to a comfortable palace with his wife, Berenice, and their daughter, Laodice, and Rufrius was busy building a garrison for the wintering troops to the east of the city near the hippodrome racetrack, thinking it prudent to quarter his legions adjacent to the Jews and Metics. Caesar was full of advice and reminders. "Don't be stingy, Cleopatra! Spend your money to feed your people, and don't pass on the cost to the poor! Why do you think Rome has so little trouble with its proletariat? Don't charge admission to the chariot racing, and think of a few spectacles you can put on in the agora free of charge. Bring companies of Greek actors to stage Aristophanes, Menander, the more cheerful playwrights the common people don't like tragedies because they tend to live tragedies. They prefer to laugh and forget their troubles for an afternoon. Put in many more public fountains, and build some ordinary bathhouses. In Rome, a frolic in a bathhouse costs a quarter of a sestertius people leave in a good mood as well as clean. Keep those wretched birds under control during summer! Hire a few men and women to wash the streets, and put in decent public latrines anywhere there's a running drain to carry the sewage away. Since Alexandria and Egypt are riddled with bureaucracies, institute citizen rolls that count heads as well as nobility, and establish a grain list that entitles the poor to one medimnus of wheat a month, plus a ration of barley so they can brew beer. The money you receive as income has to be distributed, not kept to molder if you hoard it, you cause the economy to crash. Alexandria has been tamed, but it's up to you to keep it tamed." And on, and on, and on. The laws she should pass, the bylaws and ordinances, the institution of a public auditing system. Reform Egypt's banks, owned and controlled by Pharaoh through a creaking bureaucracy that wouldn't do, just would not do! "Spend more money on education, encourage pedagogues to set up schools in public places and markets, subsidize their fees so more children can learn. You need bookkeepers, scribes and when more books come in, put them straight into the museum! Public servants are a lazy lot, so police their activities more stringently and don't offer them tenure for life." Cleopatra listened dutifully, felt a little like a rag doll that nodded its head every time it was jiggled. Now into her eighth month, she dragged herself around, couldn't stay far from a chamber pot, had to endure Caesar's son beating and battering her from inside while Caesar beat and battered her mind. Willing to endure anything except the thought that very soon he would be leaving, that she would have to live without him.

Finally came their last night, the Nones of June. At dawn Caesar, the 3,200 men of the Sixth Legion and the German cavalry would march for Syria on the first leg of a thousand-mile journey. She tried hard to make it a pleasant night, understanding that, though he did love her in his way, no woman could ever replace Rome in Caesar's heart, or mean quite as much to him as the Tenth or the Sixth. Well, they've been through more together. They are entwined among the very fibers of his being. But I too would die for him I would, I would! He is the father I didn't have, the husband of my heart, the perfect man. Who else in this whole world can equal him? Not even Alexander the Great, who was an adventuring conqueror, uninterested in the mundanities of good government or the empty bellies of the poor. Babylon holds no lure for Caesar. Caesar would never replace Rome with Alexandria. Oh, I wish he would! With Caesar by my side, Egypt would rule the world, not Rome. They could kiss and cuddle, but lovemaking was impossible. Though a man as controlled as Caesar isn't put out by that. I like the way he strokes me, so rhythmic and firm, yet the skin of his palm is smooth. After he goes, I will be able to imagine those hands, so beautiful. His son will be just like him. "After Asia, will it be Rome?" she asked. "Yes, but not for very long. I have to fight a campaign in Africa Province and finish the Republicans for good," he said, and sighed. "Oh, that Magnus had lived! Things might have turned out very differently." She experienced one of her peculiar insights. "That's not so, Caesar. Had Magnus lived, had he reached an accommodation with you, nothing would have been different. There are too many others who will never bend the knee to you." For a moment he said nothing, then laughed. "You're right, my love, absolutely right. It's Cato keeps them going." "Sooner or later you'll be permanently in Rome." "One of these days, perhaps. I have to fight the Parthians and get Crassus's Eagles back fairly soon, however." "But I must see you again! I must! I had thought that as soon as your wars against the Republicans were over, you would settle to rule Rome. Then I could come to Rome to be with you." He lifted himself on one elbow to look down at her. "Oh, Cleopatra, will you never learn? First of all, no sovereign can be away from their realm for months at a time, so you can't come to Rome. And secondly, it's your duty as a sovereign to rule." "You're a sovereign, but you're away for ages at a time," she said mutinously. "I am not a sovereign! Rome has consuls, praetors, an array of magistrates. A dictator is a temporary measure, no more. The moment I as the Dictator set Rome on her feet properly, I will step down. Just as Sulla did. It's not my constitutional prerogative to rule Rome. Were it, I wouldn't be away from Rome. Just as you can't absent yourself from Egypt." "Oh, let's not quarrel on our last night!" she cried, her hand clasping his forearm urgently. But to herself she was thinking, I am Pharaoh, I am God on earth. I can do whatever I want to do, nothing constrains me. I have Uncle Mithridates and four Roman legions. So when you have vanquished the Republicans and take up residence in Rome, Caesar, I will come to you. Not rule Rome? Of course you will!

II

The March of Catos Ten Thousand

From SEXTILIS (AUGUST) of 48 B.C. until MAY of 47 B.C.

Labienus brought the news of Pompey the Great's defeat at Pharsalus to Cato and Cicero; riding hard, he reached the Adriatic coast of Macedonia three days after the battle, his tenth horse on its last legs. Though he was alone and still in his dowdy, workmanlike war gear, the sentries at the camp gates did not need a second glance to recognize that dark, un-Roman countenance; Pompey's commander of cavalry was known and feared by every ranker soldier. Assured that Cato was in the general's quarters, Labienus slid from his exhausted animal's back and strode off up the Via Principalis toward the scarlet flag stretched rigid in a stiff sea breeze, hoping against hope that Cato would be on his own. Now was not the moment to suffer Cicero's histrionics. But that was not to be. The Great Advocate was within, his perfectly chosen, formally phrased Latin issuing out of the open door just as if it were a jury he addressed, rather than the dour, unimpressionable Cato. Who, Labienus saw in the instant that he crossed the threshold, was confronting Cicero with an expression that said his patience was being sorely tried. Startled at this abrupt invasion, Cato and Cicero both jumped, mouths open to speak; Labienus's face silenced them. "He trounced us in less than an hour," Labienus said curtly as he went straight to the wine table. Thirst made him drink the beaker's contents at a gulp, then he grimaced, shuddered. "Why is it, Cato, that you never have any decent wine?" It was Cicero who did the squawking, the horrified trumpeting, the agitated flapping. "Oh, this is shocking, terrible!" he cried, tears beginning to course down his face. "What am I doing here? Why did I ever come on this hideous, ill-fated expedition? By rights I should have stayed in Italy, if not in Rome there I might have been of some use here, I am an impediment!" And more, and more. Nothing was known that could stem the spate of this wordsmith's verbosity. Whereas Cato stood for many moments without a thing to say, conscious only of a numbness creeping through his jaws. The impossible had happened: Caesar was victorious. But how could that be? How? How could the wrong side have proven itself right? Neither man's reaction surprised Labienus, who knew them too well and liked them too little; dismissing Cicero as a nothing, he focused his attention on Cato, the most obdurate of all Caesar's countless enemies. Clearly Cato had never dreamed that his own side the Republicans, they called themselves could be beaten by a man who had contravened every tenet of Rome's unwritten constitution, who had committed the sacrilege of marching on his own country. Now Cato was the bull struck by the sacrificial hammer, down on his knees without knowing how he had gotten there. "He trounced us in less than an hour?" Cato finally said. "Yes. Though he was heavily outnumbered, had no reserves and only a thousand horse, he trounced us. I've never known such an important battle to take so little time. Its name? Pharsalus." And that, Labienus vowed to himself, is all you're going to hear about Pharsalus from me. I generaled for Caesar from the first to the last year of his exploits in Long-haired Gaul, and I was sure I could beat him. I had become convinced that without me, he couldn't have begun to conquer. But Pharsalus showed me that whatever he used to give me to do was given in the certainty that a skilled subordinate could not fail. He always reserved the strategy for himself, just turned Trebonius, Decimus Brutus, Fabius and the rest of us into tactical instruments of his strategic will. Somewhere along the way between the Rubicon and Pharsalus I lost sight of that, so when I led my six thousand horse against Caesar's mere thousand Germans at Pharsalus, I deemed the battle already won. A battle I engineered because the great Pompeius Magnus was too worn down by the strife inside his own command tent to think of anything beyond self-pity. I wanted battle, his couch generals wanted battle, but Pompeius Magnus wanted Fabian warfare starve the enemy, harry the enemy, but never fight the enemy. Well, he was right, we were wrong. How many pitched battles has Caesar fought in? Very often, literally fought in, shield and sword among his front-line troops? Near enough to fifty. There is nothing he hasn't seen, nothing he hasn't done. What I do by inspiring fear nay, terror! in my soldiers, he does by making his soldiers love him better than they love their own lives. A surge of bitterness drove him to crack his hand against the almost empty wine flagon, send it flying with a clang. "Did all the good wine go east to Thessaly?" he demanded. "Is there no drop worth drinking in this benighted place?" Cato came to life. "I neither know nor care!" he barked. "If you want to swill nectar, Titus Labienus, go somewhere else! And," he added, with a sweep of his hand toward Cicero, who was still carrying on, "take him with you!" Without waiting to see how they took this, Cato walked out his front door and made for the snakepath leading to the top of Petra hill.

* * *

Not months, but scant days. How many days, eighteen? Yes, it is only eighteen days since Pompeius Magnus led our massive army east to fresh ground in Thessaly. He didn't want me with him does he think I don't know how my criticisms irk him? So he elected to take my dear Marcus Favonius with him in my stead, leave me behind here in Dyrrachium to care for the wounded. Marcus Favonius, best of my friends where is he? If he were alive, he would have returned to me with Titus Labienus. Labienus! The butcher to end all butchers, a barbarian in Roman skin, a savage who took slavering pleasure in torturing fellow Romans simply because they had soldiered for Caesar rather than Pompeius. And Pompeius, who had the hubris to nickname himself "Magnus" "Great" never even made a token protest when Labienus tortured the seven hundred captured men of Caesar's Ninth Legion. Men whom Labienus knew well from Long-haired Gaul. That is the nucleus of it, that is why we lost the critical confrontation at Pharsalus. The right cause has been pursued by the wrong people. Pompeius Magnus is Great no longer, and our beloved Republic has entered its death throes. In less than one hour. The view from the heights of Petra hill was beautiful; a wine-dark sea beneath a softly misty sky and its watery sun, lush verdant hills that soared in the distance toward the high peaks of Candavia, the small terra-cotta city of Dyrrachium and its stout wooden bridge to the mainland. Peaceful. Serene. Even the miles upon miles upon miles of forbidding fortifications, bristling with towers and duplicating themselves beyond a scorched no-man's-land, were settling into the landscape as if they had always been there. Relics of a titanic siege struggle that had gone on for months until suddenly, in the space of a night, Caesar had vanished and Pompeius had deluded himself he was the victor. Cato stood on Petra's pinnacle and looked south. There, a hundred miles away on Corcyra Island, was Gnaeus Pompeius, his huge naval base, his hundreds of ships, his thousands of sailors, oarsmen and marines. Odd, that Pompeius Magnus's elder son should have a talent for making war upon the sea. The wind whipped at the stiff leather straps of his kilt and sleeves, tore his long and greying auburn hair to fluttering ribbons, plastered his beard against his chest. It was a year and a half since he had left Italy, and in all that time he had neither shaved nor cut his hair; Cato was in mourning for the crumbled mos maiorum, which was the way Roman things had always been and the way Roman things should always be, forever and ever. But the mos maiorum had been steadily eroded by a series of political demagogues and military marshals for almost a hundred years, culminating in Gaius Julius Caesar, the worst one of all. How I hate Caesar! Hated him long before I was old enough to enter the Senate his airs and graces, his beauty, his golden oratory, his brilliant legislation, his habit of cuckolding his political enemies, his unparalleled military skill, his utter contempt for the mos maiorum, his genius for destruction, his unassailably noble patrician birth. How we fought him in the Forum and the Senate, we who called ourselves the boni, the good men! Catulus, Ahenobarbus, Metellus Scipio, Bibulus and I. Catulus is dead, Bibulus is dead where are Ahenobarbus and that monumental idiot, Metellus Scipio? Am I the only one of the boni left?

When the perpetual rains of this coast suddenly began to fall, Cato returned to the general's house, to find it empty save for Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion. Two faces he could greet with genuine gladness. Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion had been Cato's pair of tame philosophers for more years than any of them could remember; he boarded and paid them for their company. None but a fellow Stoic could have endured Cato's hospitality for more than a day or two, for this great-grandson of the immortal Cato the Censor prided himself on the simplicity of his tastes; the rest of his world just called him stingy. Which judgement did not upset Cato in the least. He was immune to criticism and the good opinion of others. However, Cato's was a household as much addicted to wine as to Stoicism. If the wine he and his tame philosophers drank was cheap and nasty, the supply of it was bottomless, and if Cato paid no more than five thousand sesterces for a slave, he could say with truth that he got as much work out of the man he would have no women in his house as he would have from one who cost fifty times that. Because Romans, even those lowly enough to belong to the Head Count, liked to live as comfortably as possible, Cato's peculiar devotion to austerity had set him apart as an admired even treasured eccentric; this, combined with his quite appalling tenacity and incorruptible integrity, had elevated him to hero status. No matter how unpalatable a duty might be, Cato would perform it with heart and soul. His harsh and unmelodic voice, his brilliance at the filibuster and harangue, his blind determination to bring Caesar down, had all contributed to his legend. Nothing could intimidate him, and no one could reason with him. Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion would not have dreamed of trying to reason with him; few loved him, but they did. "Are we housing Titus Labienus?" Cato asked, going to the wine table and pouring himself a full beaker, unwatered. "No," said Statyllus, smiling faintly. "He's usurped Lentulus Crus's old domicile, and scrounged an amphora of the best Falernian from the quartermaster to drown his sorrows." "I wish him well of anywhere except here," Cato said, standing while his servant removed the leather gear from him, then sitting with a sigh. "I suppose the news of our defeat has spread?" "Everywhere," Athenodorus Cordylion said, rheumy old eyes wet with tears. "Oh, Marcus Cato, how can we live in a world that Caesar will rule as a tyrant?" "That world is not yet a foregone conclusion. It won't be over until I for one am dead and burned." Cato drank deeply, stretched out his long, well-muscled legs. "I imagine there are survivors of Pharsalus who feel the same Titus Labienus, most definitely. If Caesar is still in the mood to issue pardons, I doubt he'll get one. Issue pardons! As if Caesar were our king. While all and sundry marvel at his clemency, sing his praises as a merciful man! Pah! Caesar is another Sulla ancestors back to the very beginning, royal for seven centuries. More royal Sulla never claimed to be descended from Venus and Mars. If he isn't stopped, Caesar will crown himself King of Rome. He's always had the blood. Now he has the power. What he doesn't have are Sulla's vices, and it was only Sulla's vices prevented him from tying the diadem around his head." "Then we must offer to the gods that Pharsalus is not our last battle," Statyllus said, replenishing Cato's beaker from a new flagon. "Oh, if only we knew more about what happened! Who lives, who died, who was captured, who escaped " "This tastes suspiciously good," Cato interrupted, frowning. "I thought given this dreadful news, you understand that just this once we wouldn't infringe our convictions if we followed Labienus's example," Athenodorus Cordylion said apologetically. "To indulge oneself like a sybarite is not a right act, no matter how dreadful the news!" Cato snapped. "I disagree," said a honeyed voice from the doorway. "Oh. Marcus Cicero," Cato said flatly, face unwelcoming. Still weeping, Cicero found a chair from which he could see Cato, mopped his eyes with a crisp, clean, large handkerchief an indispensable tool for a courtroom genius and accepted a cup from Statyllus. I know, thought Cato with detachment, that his impassioned grief is genuine, yet it offends me almost to nausea. A man must conquer all his emotions before he is truly free. "What did you manage to learn from Titus Labienus?" he rapped, so harshly that Cicero jumped. "Where are the others? Who died at Pharsalus?" "Just Ahenobarbus," Cicero answered. Ahenobarbus! Cousin, brother-in-law, indefatigable boni confrere. I shall never see that determined countenance again. How he railed about his baldness, convinced his shiny dome had set the electors against him whenever he ran for a priesthood . . . Cicero was rattling on. "It seems Pompeius Magnus escaped, along with everybody else. According to Labienus, that happens in a rout. The conflicts which see men die on the field are those fought to a finish. Whereas our army caved in upon itself. Once Caesar shattered Labienus's cavalry charge by arming his spare cohorts of foot with siege spears, it was all over. Pompeius left the field. The other leaders followed, while the troops either dropped their weapons and cried quarter, or ran away." "Your son?" Cato asked, feeling the obligation. "I understand that he acquitted himself splendidly, but was not harmed," Cicero said, transparently glad. "And your brother, Quintus, his son?" Anger and exasperation distorted Cicero's very pleasant face. "Neither fought at Pharsalus brother Quintus always said that he wouldn't fight for Caesar, but that he respected the man too much to fight against him either." A shrug. "That is the worst of civil war. It divides families." "No news of Marcus Favonius?" Cato asked, keeping his tones suitably hard. "None." Cato grunted, seemed to dismiss the matter. "What are we going to do?" Cicero asked rather pathetically. "Strictly speaking, Marcus Cicero, that is your decision to make," Cato said. "You are the only consular here. I have been praetor, but not consul. Therefore you outrank me." "Nonsense!" Cicero cried. "Pompeius left you in charge, not me! You're the one living in the general's house." "My commission was specific and limited. The Law prescribes that executive decisions be taken by the most senior man." "Well, I absolutely refuse to take them!" The fine grey eyes studied Cicero's mutinous, fearful face why will he always end a sheep, a mouse? Cato sighed. "Very well, I will make the executive decisions. But only on the condition that you vouch for my actions when I am called to account by the Senate and People of Rome." "What Senate?" Cicero asked bitterly. "Caesar's puppets in Rome, or the several hundred at present flying in all directions from Pharsalus?" "Rome's true Republican government, which will rally somewhere and keep on opposing Caesar the monarch." "You'll never give up, will you?" "Not while I still breathe." "Nor will I, but not in your way, Cato. I'm not a soldier, I lack the sinew. I'm thinking of returning to Italy and starting to organize civilian resistance to Caesar." Cato leaped to his feet, fists clenched. "Don't you dare!" he roared. "To return to Italy is to abase yourself to Caesar!" "Pax, pax, I'm sorry I said it!" Cicero bleated. "But what are we going to do?" "We pack up and take the wounded to Corcyra, of course. We have ships here, but if we delay, the Dyrrachians will burn them," Cato said. "Once we reach haven with Gnaeus Pompeius, we'll get news of the others and determine our final destination." "Eight thousand sick men plus all our stores and supplies? We don't have nearly enough ships!" Cicero gasped. "If," Cato said a little derisively, "Gaius Caesar could jam twenty thousand soldiers, five thousand noncombatants and slaves, all his mules, wagons, equipment and artillery into less than three hundred battered, leaky ships and cross ocean water between Britannia and Gaul, then there is no reason why I can't put a quarter of that number aboard a hundred good stout transports and sail close to shore in placid waters." "Oh! Oh, yes, yes! You're quite right, Cato." Cicero rose to his feet, handed his beaker to Statyllus with trembling fingers. "I must start my own packing. When do you sail?" "The day after tomorrow."

The Corcyra that Cato remembered from a previous visit had vanished, at least along its coasts. An exquisite island, the gem of the Adriatic, hilly and lush, a place of dreamy inlets and translucent, glowing seas. A series of Pompeian admirals culminating in Gnaeus Pompey had remodeled Corcyra; every cove contained transport ships or war galleys, every small village had turned into a temporary town to service the demands of camps on their peripheries, the once pellucid sea was awash with human and animal excreta and stank worse than the mud flats of Egyptian Pelusium. To compound this lack of hygiene, Gnaeus Pompey had established his main base on the narrow straits facing the coast of the mainland. His reason: that this area yielded the best catches as Caesar tried to ferry troops and supplies from Brundisium to Macedonia. But the currents in the straits did not suck the filth away; rather, it accumulated. Cato seemed not to notice the stench, whereas Cicero railed about it constantly, his handkerchief muffling his green face and affronted nostrils. In the end he removed himself to a decayed villa atop a hill where he could walk in a lovely orchard and pick fruits from the trees, almost forget the misery of homesickness. Cicero uprooted from Italy was at best a shadow of himself.

The sudden appearance of Cicero's younger brother, Quintus, and his son, Cicero's nephew Quintus Junior, only served to swell his woes. Unwilling to fight for either side, the pair had skulked from place to place all over Greece and Macedonia, then, upon Pompey the Great's defeat at Pharsalus, they had headed for Dyrrachium and Cicero. To find the camp deserted, and a general feeling in the neighborhood that the Republicans had sailed for Corcyra. Off they went to Corcyra. "Now you know," Quintus snarled at his big brother, "why I wouldn't ally myself with that overrated fool, Pompeius Magnus. He's not fit to tie Caesar's bootlaces." "What is the world coming to," Cicero riposted, "when the affairs of state are decided upon a battlefield? Nor, in the long run, can they be. Sooner or later Caesar has to return to Rome and pick up the reins of government and I intend to be in Rome to make it impossible for him to govern." Quintus Junior snorted. "Gerrae, Uncle Marcus! If you set foot on Italian soil, you'll be arrested." "That, nephew, is where you're wrong," Cicero said with lofty scorn. "I happen to have a letter from Publius Dolabella begging me to return to Italy! He says that my presence will be welcome that Caesar is anxious to have consulars of my standing in the Senate. He insists upon healthy opposition." "How nice to have a foot in both camps!" Quintus Senior sneered. "One of Caesar's chief minions your son-in-law! Though I hear that Dolabella isn't being a good husband to Tullia." "All the more reason for me to go home." "What about me, Marcus? Why should you, who openly opposed Caesar, be permitted to go home free and clear? My son and I who have not opposed Caesar! will have to find him and secure pardons because everyone thinks we fought at Pharsalus. And what are we going to do for money?" Conscious that his face was reddening, Cicero tried to look indifferent. "That is surely your own business, Quintus." "Cacat! You owe me millions, Marcus, millions! Not to mention the millions you owe Caesar! Cough some of it up right this moment, or I swear I'll slice you up the front from guts to gizzard!" Quintus yelled. As he was not wearing his sword or dagger, an empty threat; but the exchange set the tenor of their reunion, which exacerbated Cicero's rudderlessness, worry for his daughter, Tullia, and indignation at the heartless conduct of his wife, Terentia, a termagant. Possessed of an independent fortune she had refused to share with the spendthrift Cicero, Terentia was up to every trick in the money book, from shifting the boundary stones of her land to declaring the most productive tracts sacred sites, thereby avoiding taxes. Activities Cicero had lived with for so long that he took them for granted. What he couldn't forgive her was the way she was treating poor Tullia, who had good cause to complain about her husband, Publius Cornelius Dolabella. But not as far as Terentia was concerned! If Cicero didn't know for a fact that Terentia had no feelings beyond satisfaction at making a profit, he would have said she was in love with Dolabella herself. Siding with him against her own flesh and blood! Tullia was ill, had been ever since she lost her child. My baby, my sweetheart! Though, of course, Cicero didn't dare voice much of all that in his letters to Dolabella; he needed Dolabella!

Toward the middle of September (the very beginning of summer by the seasons that year), the Admiral of Corcyra called a small council in his headquarters. Going on for thirty-two now, Gnaeus Pompey looked very much like his fabled father, though his hair was a darker shade of gold, his eyes were more grey than blue, and his nose was more Roman than Pompey the Great's despised snub. Command sat upon him easily; as he had his father's gift for organization, the task of manipulating a dozen separate fleets and many thousands of their servitors suited his talents. What he lacked were Pompey the Great's overweening conceit and inferiority complex; Gnaeus Pompey's mother, Mucia Tertia, was a high aristocrat with famous ancestors, so the dark thoughts of obscure Picentine origins which had so plagued poor Pompey the Great never crossed his son's mind. Only eight men were present: Gnaeus Pompey, Cato, all three Cicerones, Titus Labienus, Lucius Afranius and Marcus Petreius. Afranius and Petreius had generaled for Pompey the Great for many years, had even run both the Spains for him until Caesar had thrown them out last year. Grizzled they might be, but they were Military Men to the core, and old soldiers never die. Arriving in Dyrrachium just before the exodus to Corcyra, naturally they tagged along, delighted to see Labienus, a fellow Picentine. They had brought more news new which cheered Cato immensely, but cast Cicero down: resistance to Caesar was going to re-form in Roman Africa Province, still held by a Republican governor. Juba, King of neighboring Numidia, was openly on the Republican side, so all the survivors of Pharsalus were trying to head for Africa Province with as many troops as they could find. "What of your father?" Cicero asked Gnaeus Pompey hollowly as he seated himself between his brother and his nephew. Oh, the horror of having to traipse off to Africa Province when all he yearned to do was go home! "I've sent a letter to half a hundred different places around the eastern end of Our Sea," Gnaeus Pompey said quietly, "but so far I've heard nothing. I'll try again soon. There is a report that he was in Lesbos briefly to meet my stepmother and young Sextus, but if so, my letter there must have missed him. I have not heard from Cornelia Metella or Sextus either." "What do you yourself intend to do, Gnaeus Pompeius?" asked Labienus, baring his big yellow teeth in the snarl as unconscious and habitual as a facial tic. Ah, that's interesting, the silent Cato thought, eyes going from one face to the other. Pompeius's son dislikes this savage quite as much as I do. "I shall remain here until the Etesian winds arrive with the Dog Star at least another month," Gnaeus Pompey answered, "then I'll move all my fleets and personnel to Sicily, Melite, Gaudos, the Vulcaniae Isles. Anywhere I can gain a toehold and make it difficult for Caesar to feed Italy and Rome. If Italy and Rome starve for lack of grain, it will be that much harder for Caesar to inflict his will on them." "Good!" Labienus exclaimed, and sat back contentedly. "I'm for Africa with Afranius and Petreius. Tomorrow." Gnaeus Pompey raised his brows. "A ship I can donate you, Labienus, but why the hurry? Stay longer and take some of Cato's recovering wounded with you. I have sufficient transports." "No," Labienus said, rising with a nod to Afranius and Petreius. "I'll go to Cythera and Crete first to see what I can pick up there by way of refugee troops in your donated ship. If I find men to transport, I'll commandeer more ships and press crews if I have to, though the soldiers can row. Save your own resources for Sicily." The next moment he was gone, Afranius and Petreius in his wake like two big, amiable, elderly hounds. "So much for Labienus," said Cicero through his teeth. "I can't say I'll miss him." Nor I, Cato wanted to say, but didn't. Instead he addressed Gnaeus Pompey. "So what of the eight thousand men I brought from Dyrrachium? A thousand at least are fit to sail for Africa at once, but the rest need more time to heal. None of them wants to give up the struggle, but I can't leave them here if you go." "Well, it seems our new Great Man is more interested in Asia Minor than he is in the Adriatic." Lip lifted in contempt, Gnaeus Pompey snorted. "Kissing the ground at Ilium in honor of his ancestor Aeneas, if you please! Remitting Trojan taxes! Looking for the tomb of Hector!" Suddenly he grinned. "Not that leisure has lasted long. A courier came today and informed me that King Pharnaces has come down from Cimmeria to invade Pontus." Quintus Cicero laughed. "Following in his dear old dad's footsteps, eh? Has Caesar moved to contain him?" "No, Caesar's still heading south. It's that traitorous cur Calvinus has to contend with the son of Mithridates the Great. These oriental kings! Hydra-headed. Chop one off, and two more sprout from the stump. So I daresay Pharnaces means it's war as usual from one end of Anatolia to the other." "Which gives Caesar plenty to do at the eastern end of Our Sea," Cato said with huge satisfaction. "We'll have sufficient time to grow strong again in Africa Province." "You realize, Cato, that Labienus is trying to steal a march on you, and on my father, and on anyone else who might lay claim to the high command in Africa?" Gnaeus Pompey asked. "Why else is he so anxious to get there?" He pounded his fist against the palm of his other hand, anguished. "Oh, I wish I knew where my father is! I know him, Cato, I know how depressed he can get!" "He'll turn up, have no fear, Cato said, leaning to clasp the Admiral's brawny arm with unusual demonstrativeness. "As for me, I have no desire to occupy the command tent." He jerked his head toward Cicero. "There sits my superior, Gnaeus Pompeius. Marcus Cicero is a consular, so when I leave for Africa, it will be under his authority." Cicero emitted a squeak of outrage and leaped to his feet. "No, no, no, no! I've told you before, my answer is no! Go where you want and do what you want, Cato appoint one of your philosopher toadies or a baboon or that painted whore who pesters you so to the command tent, but don't appoint me! My mind is made up, I'm going home!" Which brought Cato to tower at his full imposing height, looking down that even more imposing nose at Cicero as if he suddenly spied some noisome insect. "By virtue of your rank and your own windbag prating, Marcus Tullius Cicero, you are first and foremost the Republic's servant! What you want and what you do are two quite different horses! Not once in your lordly life have you genuinely done your duty! Especially when that duty requires you to pick up a sword! You're a Forum creature whose deeds don't begin to rival your words!" "How dare you!" Cicero gasped, face mottling. "How dare you, Marcus Porcius Cato, you sanctimonious, self-righteous, pigheaded monster! It was you and no one else who brought us to this, it was you and no one else who who forced Pompeius Magnus into civil war! When I came to him with Caesar's very reasonable and fair offer of terms, it was you who threw such a colossal tantrum that you literally terrified the life out of him! You screeched, screamed and howled until Magnus was a shivering heap of jelly you had the man groveling and crawling to you more abjectly than Lucullus groveled and crawled to Caesar! No, Cato, I don't blame Caesar for this civil war, I blame you!" Gnaeus Pompey was out of his chair too, white with rage. "What do you mean, Cicero, you ancestorless nobody from the back hills of Samnium? My father intimidated to jelly? My father groveling and crawling? Take that back, or I'll ram it between your rotting teeth with my fist!" "No, I will not recant!" Cicero roared, beside himself. "I was there! I saw what happened! Your father, Gnaeus Pompeius, is a spoiled baby who toyed with Caesar and the idea of civil war to inflate his own opinion of himself, who never believed for one moment that Caesar would cross the Rubicon with one paltry legion! Who never believed that there are men with that kind of brazen courage! Who never believed in anything except his own his own myth! A myth, son of Magnus, that started when your father blackmailed Sulla into giving him the co-command, and ended a month ago on a battlefield called Pharsalus! Much though it pains me to have to admit it, your father, son of Magnus, isn't Caesar's bootlace when it comes to war or politics!" The stupefaction that had paralyzed Gnaeus Pompey almost audibly snapped; he launched himself at Cicero with a bellow, hands out to throttle him. Neither of the Quintuses moved, too enthralled to care what Gnaeus Pompey did to the family tyrant. It was Cato who stepped in front of Pompey the Great's mortally insulted son and grasped both his wrists. The tussle between them was brief; Cato forced Gnaeus Pompey's arms down effortlessly and whipped them behind his back. "That is enough!" he snapped, eyes blazing. "Gnaeus Pompeius, go back to caring for your fleets. Marcus Cicero, if you refuse to be the Republic's loyal servant, go back to Italy!" "Yes, go!" Pompey the Great's son cried, and slumped into his chair to massage feeling back into his hands. Ye gods, who would ever have thought Cato so strong? "Pack your belongings, you and your kindred, and may I never see any of your faces again! A pinnace will be waiting at dawn tomorrow to take you to Patrae, from whence you can return to Italy, or take a trip to Hades to pat Cerberuss heads! Go! Get out of my sight!" Head up, two scarlet spots in his cheeks, Cicero cuddled the massive folds of toga draped over his left shoulder and stalked out, his nephew by his side. Quintus Senior delayed a little to turn in the doorway. "I shit on both your pricks," he said with grave dignity. Which struck Gnaeus Pompey as exquisitely funny; he dropped his head into his hands and howled with mirth. "I see nothing to laugh about," Cato said, inspecting the wine table. The last few moments had been thirsty work. "You wouldn't, Cato," Gnaeus Pompey said when he was able. "By definition, a Stoic has no sense of humor." "That is true," Cato agreed, sitting down again to nurse a goblet no beakers or cups for Gnaeus Pompey of excellent Samian wine. "However, Gnaeus Pompeius, we have not yet arrived at a conclusion about either me or the wounded." "How many of your eight thousand do you really think will ever be fit to fight again?" "At least seven thousand. Can you supply me with enough transports to get the thousand best of them across to Africa in four days' time?" Gnaeus Pompey wrinkled his brow. "Wait until the Etesian winds come, Cato, they'll blow you straight to our Roman province. If you start before them, you'll be at the mercy of Austere or Libations or Zephyrus or any other wind that Areolas fancies letting out of his bag for a stretch and a canter." "No, I must leave as soon as maybe, and ask that you send the rest of my men on before you shift traps yourself. Your work is vital, but it is different from mine. My task is to preserve the very brave soldiers your father placed in my care. For they are brave. If they were not, their wounds would be nonexistent." "As you wish," said Gnaeus Pompey with a sigh. "There is a difficulty about those you want me to send on later I'm going to need the transports back for my own use. If the Etesian winds are late, I can't guarantee that they'll reach Africa Province." He shrugged. "In fact, all of you could land anywhere." "That is my worry," Cato said with all his usual sturdy resolution, but somewhat less of his usual shout.

Four days later fifty of the transports Cato had used to move his men, equipment and supplies from Dyrrachium were loaded and ready to go: 1,200 recovered soldiers formed into two cohorts, 250 noncombatant assistants, 250 pack mules, 450 wagon mules, 120 wagons, a month's supply of wheat, chickpea, bacon and oil, plus grindstones, ovens, utensils, spare clothing and arms and, a gift from Gnaeus Pompey that traveled on Cato's own ship, a thousand talents of silver coins. "Take it, I have plenty more," Gnaeus Pompey said cheerfully. "Compliments of Caesar! And," he went on, handing over a bundle of small rolls of paper, each tied and sealed, "these came from Dyrrachium for you. News of home." Fingers trembling a little, Cato told the letters over, then tucked them inside the armhole of his light leather cuirass. "Aren't you going to read them now?" The grey eyes looked very stern, yet clouded, and the generous curve of Cato's mouth was drawn up as if with pain. "No," he said, at his loudest and most truculent, "I shall read them later, when I have the time." Though it took all day to get the fifty transports out of an inadequate harbor, Gnaeus Pompey remained on the little wooden pier until the last ships went hull down over the horizon, until all that was left of them were hair-thin masts, black prickles against the opalescent skies of early evening. Then he turned and trudged back to his headquarters; life would be more peaceful, certainly, but somehow when Cato was no longer a part of things, an emptiness entered. How Cato had awed him in his youth! How much his pedagogues and rhetors had harped on the different styles of the three greatest orators in the Senate: Caesar, Cicero and Cato. Names he had grown up with, men he could never forget; his father, the First Man in Rome, never a good orator, but a master at getting his own way. Now all of them were scattered while the same patterns went on weaving, one life strand entwined with another until Atropos took pity and snipped this thread, that thread. Lucius Scribonius Libo was waiting; Gnaeus Pompey stifled a sigh. A good man who had been Admiral after Bibulus died, then had yielded gracefully to Pompey the Great's son. As was fitting. The only reason this scion of the wrong branch of the Scribonius family had risen so high so quickly lay in the fact that Gnaeus Pompey had taken one look at his dimpled, ravishingly pretty daughter, divorced his boring Claudia, and married her. A match Pompey the Great had abhorred, deplored. But that was Father, himself obsessed with marrying only the most august aristocrats, and determined that his sons should do the same. Well, Sextus was still too young for marriage, and Gnaeus had tried for the sake of harmony until he'd set eyes on the seventeen-year-old Scribonia. Love, Pompey the Great's elder son reflected as he greeted his father-in-law, could destroy the best-laid plans. They dined together, discussed the coming move to Sicily and environs, the potential resistance in Africa Province and the possible whereabouts of Pompey the Great. "Today's courier reported a rumor that he's taken Cornelia Metella and Sextus away from Lesbos, and is island-hopping down the Aegean," his elder son said. "Then," said Scribonius Libo, preparing to depart, "I think it's time that you wrote again." So when he had gone Gnaeus Pompey sat down resolutely at his desk, drew a blank double sheet of Fannian paper toward him, and picked up his reed pen, dipped it in the inkwell.

We are still alive and kicking, and we still own the seas. Please, I beg you, my beloved father, gather what ships you can and come either to me or to Africa.

But before Pompey the Great's brief reply could reach him, he learned of his father's death on the mud flats of Egyptian Pelusium at the hands of a torpid boy king and his palace cabal. Of course. Of course. As cruel, as unethical as Orientals are, they killed him thinking to curry favor with Caesar. Not for one moment would it have occurred to them that Caesar hungered to spare him. Oh, Father! This way is better! This way, you are not beholden to Caesar for the gift of continued life. When he was sure he could work without unmanning himself in front of his subordinates, Gnaeus Pompey sent 6,500 more of Cato's wounded to Africa, offering to the Lares Permarini, to Neptune and to Spes that they and Cato would find each other on that two-thousand-mile coast between the Nile Delta and Africa Province. Then he began the onerous task of removing himself, his fleets and men into bases around Sicily. Its few natives unsure whether they were glad or sorry to see the Romans go, Corcyra slowly lost its scars and returned to its sweet oblivion. Slowly.

2

Cato had decided to use his soldiers and noncombatants as oarsmen; if he didn't push them too hard, splendid exercise for convalescents, he thought. Zephyrus was blowing fitfully from the west, so sails were useless, but the weather was tranquil and the sea flat calm, as always under that gentle breeze. Hate Caesar with implacable intensity he might, but he had pored over those crisp, impersonal commentaries Caesar himself had written about his war in Gaul of the Long-hairs, and not allowed his feelings to blind him to the many practical facts they contained. Most important, that the General had shared in the sufferings and the deprivations of his ranker soldiers walked when they walked, lived on a few scraps of ghastly beef when they did, never held himself aloof from their company on the long marches and during the terrible times when they huddled behind their fortifications and could see no other fate than to be captured and burned alive in wicker cages. Politically and ideologically Cato had made great capital out of those same commentaries, but though his inwardly turned passions drove him to deride and dismiss Caesar's every action, a part of his mind absorbed the lessons. As a child Cato had found it agony to learn; he didn't even have his half sister Servilia's ability to remember what he had been taught and told, let alone possess anything approaching Caesar's legendary memory. It was rote, rote, rote for Cato, while Servilia sneered contempt and his adored half brother Caepio sheltered him from her viciousness. That Cato had survived a hideous childhood as the youngest of that tempestuous, divided brood of orphans was purely due to Caepio. Caepio, of whom it had been said that he was not his father's child, but the love child of his mother, Livia Drusa, and Cato's father, whom she later married; that Caepio's height, red hair and hugely beaked nose were pure Porcius Cato; that therefore Caepio was Cato's full, not half, brother, despite the august patrician name of Servilius Caepio he bore, and the vast fortune he had inherited as a Servilius Caepio. A fortune founded on fifteen thousand talents of gold stolen from Rome: the fabulous Gold of Tolosa. Sometimes when the wine didn't work and the daimons of the night refused to be banished, Cato would recall that evening when some minion of Uncle Drusus's enemies had thrust a small but wicked knife into Uncle Drusus's groin and twisted it until the damage within could not be repaired. A measure of how deadly the mixture of politics and love could become. The screams of agony that went on and on and on, the lake of blood on the priceless mosaic floor, the exquisite succor that the two-year-old Cato had felt enfolded within the five-year-old Caepio's embrace as all six children had witnessed Drusus's awful, lingering death. A night never to be forgotten. After his tutor finally managed to teach him to read, Cato had found his code of living in the copious works of his great-grandfather Cato the Censor, a pitiless ethic of stifled emotions, unbending principles and frugality; Caepio had tolerated it in his baby brother, but never subscribed to it himself. Though Cato, who didn't perceive the feelings of others, had not properly understood Caepio's misgivings about a code of living which did not permit its practitioner the mercy of an occasional failure. They could not be separated, even served their war training together. Cato never envisioned an existence without Caepio, his stout defender against Servilia as she heaped scorn on his auburn head because he was a descendant of Cato the Censor's disgraceful second marriage to the daughter of his own slave. Of course she was aware of Caepio's true parentage, but as he bore her own father's name, she focused all her malice on Cato. Whose progeny he actually was had never worried Caepio, Cato thought as he leaned on the ship's rail to watch the myriad twinkling lights of his fleet throw dissolving gold ribbons across the black still waters. Servilia. A monstrous child, a monstrous woman. More polluted even than our mother was. Women are despicable. The moment some haughty beautiful fellow with impeccable ancestors and tomcat appeal strolls into view, they scramble to open their legs to him. Like my first wife, Attilia, who opened her legs to Caesar. Like Servilia, who opened her legs to Caesar, still does. Like the two Domitias, the wives of Bibulus, who opened their legs to Caesar. Like half of female Rome, who opened their legs to Caesar. Caesar! Always Caesar. His mind strayed then to his nephew, Brutus. Servilia's only son. Undeniably the son of her husband at the time, Marcus Junius Brutus, whom Pompeius Magnus had had the gall to execute for treason. The fatherless Brutus had mooned for years over Caesar's daughter, Julia, even managed to become engaged to her. That had pleased Servilia! If her son was married to his daughter, she could keep Caesar in the family, didn't need to work so hard to hide her affair with Caesar from her second husband, Silanus. Silanus had died too, but of despair, not Pompeius Magnus's sword. Servilia always said that I couldn't win Brutus to my side, but I did. I did! The first horror for him was the day that he found out his mother had been Caesar's mistress for five years; the second was the day Caesar broke his engagement to Julia and married the girl to Pompeius Magnus, almost old enough to be her grandfather and Brutus's father's executioner. Pure political expediency, but it had bound Pompeius Magnus to Caesar until Julia died. And the bleeding Brutus how soft he is! turned from his mother to me. It is a right act to inflict punishment upon the immoral, and the worst punishment I could have found for Servilia was to take her precious son away. Where is Brutus now? A lukewarm Republican at best, always torn between his Republican duty and his besetting sin, money. Neither a Croesus nor a Midas too Roman, of course. Too steeped in interest rates, brokerage fees, sleeping partnerships and all the furtive commercial activities of a Roman senator, disbarred by tradition from naked moneymaking, but too avaricious to resist the temptation. Brutus had inherited the Servilius Caepio fortune founded in the Gold of Tolosa. Cato ground his teeth, grasped the rail with both hands until his knuckles glistened white. For Caepio, beloved Caepio, had died. Died alone on his way to Asia Province, waiting in vain for me to hold his hand and help him cross the River. I arrived an hour too late. Oh, life, life! Mine has never been the same since I gazed on Caepio's dead face, and howled, and moaned, and yammered like one demented. I was demented. I am still oh, still demented. The pain! Caepio was thirty to my twenty-seven; soon I will be forty-six. Yet Caepio's death seems like yesterday, my grief as fresh now as it was then. Brutus inherited in accordance with the mos maiorum; he was Caepio's closest agnate male relative. Servilia's son, his nephew. I do not grudge Brutus one sestertius of that staggering fortune, and can console myself with the knowledge that Caepio's wealth could not have gone to a more careful custodian than he. I simply wish that Brutus was more a man, less a milksop. But with that mother, what else could I expect? Servilia has made him what she wanted obedient, subservient, and desperately afraid of her. How odd, that Brutus actually got up the gumption to cut his leading strings and join Pompeius Magnus in Macedonia. That cur Labienus says he fought at Pharsalus. Amazing. Perhaps being isolated from his harpy of a mother has wrought great changes in him? Perhaps he'll even show his pimple-pocked face in Africa Province? Hah! I'll believe that when I see it! Cato swallowed a yawn, and went to lie on his straw pallet between the miserably still forms of Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion shockingly bad sailors, both of them.

Zephyrus continued to blow from the west, but veered around just sufficiently to the north to keep Cato's fifty transports heading in the general direction of Africa. However, he noted with sinking heart, far to the east of Africa Province. Instead of sighting first Italy's heel, then Italy's toe, and finally Sicily, they were pushed firmly against the west coast of the Greek Peloponnese all the way to Cape Taenarum, from whence they limped to Cythera, the beautiful island that Labienus had intended to visit in search of troops fleeing from Pharsalus. If he was still there, he didn't signal from the shore. Suppressing his anxiety, Cato sailed on toward Crete, and passed the stubby sere bluffs of Criumetopon on the eleventh day at sea. Gnaeus Pompey had not been able to provide a pilot, but had sent Cato to spend a day with his six best men, all experienced mariners who knew the eastern end of Our Sea as well as had the Phoenicians of old. Thus it was Cato who identified the various landfalls, Cato who had an idea of where they were going. Though they had sighted no other ships, Cato hadn't dared to stop and take on water anywhere in Greece, so on the twelfth day he anchored his fleet in unsheltered but placid conditions off Cretan Gaudos Isle, and there made sure that every barrel and amphora he owned was filled to the brim from a spring that gushed out of a cliff into the wavelets. Cretan Gaudos was the last lonely outpost before he committed them to the empty wastes of the Libyan Sea. Libya. They were going to Libya, where men were executed smeared with honey and lashed across an ant heap. Libya. A place of nomad Marmaridae marble people and, if the Greek geographers were to be believed, perpetually shifting sands, rainless skies. At Gaudos he had himself rowed in a tiny boat from one cluster of transports to the next, standing up to shout his little speech of cheer and explanation in that famously stentorian voice. "Fellow voyagers, the coast of Africa is still far away, but here we must say farewell to the friendly breast of Mother Earth, for from now on we sail without sight of land amid the streams of tunnyfish and the whoofs of dolphins. Do not be afraid! I, Marcus Porcius Cato, have you in my hand, and I will hold you safely until we reach Africa. We will keep our ships together, we will row hard but sensibly, we will sing the songs of our beloved Italy, we will trust in ourselves and in our gods. We are Romans of the true Republic, and we will survive to make life hard for Caesar, so I swear it by Sol Indiges, Tellus and Liber Pater!" A little speech greeted by frenzied cheers, smiling faces. Then, though he was neither priest nor augur, Cato killed a bidentine ewe and offered it, as the Commander, to the Lares Permarini, the protectors of those who traveled on the sea. A fold of his purple-bordered toga over his head, he prayed: "O ye who are called the Lares Permarini, or any other name ye prefer ye who may be gods, goddesses or of no sex at all we ask that ye intercede on our behalf with the mighty Father Neptune whose offspring ye may or may not be before we set out on our journey to Africa. We pray that ye will testify before all the gods that we are sincere as we ask ye to keep us safe, keep us free from the storms and travails of the deep, keep our ships together, and allow us to land in some civilized place. In accordance with our contractual agreements, which go back to the time of Romulus, we hereby offer ye the proper sacrifice, a fine young female sheep which has been cleansed and purified." And on the thirteenth day the fleet weighed anchor to sail to only the Lares Permarini knew where. Having attained his sea legs, Statyllus abandoned his bed and kept Cato company. "Though I try valiantly, I can never understand the Roman mode of worship," he said, now enjoying the slight motion of a big, heavy ship riding a glossy sea. "In what way, Statyllus?" "The legality, Marcus Cato. How can any people have legal contracts with their gods?" "Romans do, always have done. Though I confess, not being a priest, that I wasn't exactly sure when the contract with the Lares Permarini was drawn up," Cato said very seriously. "However, I did remember that Lucius Ahenobarbus said the contracts with numina like the Lares and Penates were drawn up by Romulus. It's only the late arrivals like Magna Mater and" he grimaced in disgust "Isis whose legal agreements with the Senate and People of Rome are preserved. A priest would automatically know, it's a part of his job. But who would elect Marcus Porcius Cato to one of the pontifical colleges when he can't even get himself elected consul in a poor year of dismal candidates?" "You are still young," Statyllus said softly, well aware of Cato's disappointment when he had failed to secure the consulship four years ago. "Once the true government of Rome is restored, you will be senior consul, returned by all the Centuries." "That is as may be. First, let us get ourselves to Africa."

The days crept by as the fleet crept southeast, chiefly by oar power, though the huge single sail each ship bore aloft on a mast did swell occasionally, help a little. However, as a slack sail made rowing a harder business, sails were furled unless the day was one of frequent helpful puffs. To keep himself fit and alert, Cato took a regular shift on an oar, plying it alone. Like merchant vessels, transports had but one bank of oars, fifteen to a side. All were fully decked, which meant the oarsmen sat within the hull, an ordeal more endurable because they were housed in an outrigger that projected them well over the water, made it easier and airier to row. Warships were entirely different, had several banks of oars plied by two to five men per oar, the bottom bank so close to the surface of the sea that the ports were sealed with leather valves. But war galleys were never meant to carry cargo or stay afloat between battles; they were jealously cared for and spent most of their twenty years of service sitting ashore in ship sheds. When Gnaeus Pompey quit Corcyra, he left its natives hundreds of ship sheds firewood! Because Cato believed that selfless hard work was one of the marks of a good man, he put his back to it, and inspired the other twenty-nine men who rowed with him to do the same. Word of the Commander's participation somehow spread from ship to ship, and men rowed more willingly, stroking to the beat of the hortator's drum. Counting every soul aboard those ships carrying soldiers rather than mules, wagons or equipment, there were men enough for two teams only, which meant a constant four hours on, four hours off, day and night. The diet was monotonous; bread, the universal staple, had been off the menu except for that day spent at Cretan Gaudos. No ship could risk fire by stoking ovens. A steady fire was lit on a hearth of firebricks to heat a huge iron cauldron, and in that only one food could be cooked thick pease porridge flavored with a small chunk of bacon or salt pork. Concerned about drinking water, Cato had issued an order that the porridge was to be eaten without additional salt, yet another blow for appetites. However, the weather allowed all fifty ships to keep close together, and it seemed, Cato ascertained on his constant trips around them in his tiny boat, that his 1,500 men were as optimistic as he could have hoped for, given their healthy fear of an entity as secretive and mysterious as the sea. No Roman soldier was happy on the sea. Dolphins were greeted with joy, but there were sharks too, and schools of fish fled at the approach of all those whacking oars, which limited visual entertainment as well as guaranteed the absence of fish stew. The mules drank more than Cato had estimated, the sun beat down every day, and the level of water in the barrels was dropping with appalling swiftness. Ten days out from Cretan Gaudos, he began to doubt that they would live to see land. As he took his tiny boat from ship to ship, he promised the men that the mules would go overboard long before the water barrels were empty. A promise his men did not welcome; they were soldiers, and mules to soldiers were quite as precious as gold. Each century had ten mules to carry what a man could not fit into his fifty-pound back load, and one four-mule wagon for the really heavy stuff. Then Corus began to blow out of the northwest; whooping with delight, the men swarmed to break out the sails. In Italy, a wet wind, but not in the Libyan Sea. Their pace picked up, the oars were easier to pull, and hope blossomed.

At the middle of the fourteenth night since Cretan Gaudos, Cato woke and sat up in a hurry, the nostrils of his awesome beak flaring. The sea, he had long realized, had a smell all its own sweetish, weedy, faintly fishy. But now a different perfume was smothering it. Earth! He could smell earth! Sniffing ecstatically, he went to the rail and lifted his eyes to that magical indigo sky. It wasn't dark, had never really been dark. Though the orb of the moon had waned to invisibility, the vault was a richly glowing spangle of light from countless stars, spun in places like thin veils, all save the planets winking. The Greeks say that the planets revolve around our globe much closer to it than the shimmering stars, which are an unimaginable distance away. We are blessed, for we are the home of the gods. We are the center of the whole universe, we hold court for all the celestial bodies. And, to worship us and the gods, they shine, lamps of the night reminding us that light is life. My letters! My letters are still unread! Tomorrow we will land in Africa, and I will have to sustain the spirits of the men in a place of marble people and shifting sands. Like it or not, I must read my letters as soon as dawn pales the sky, before excitement spreads and I am caught up in it. Until then, I row.

From Servilia, a distillation of pure poison; mumbling his way through her conjoined words, Cato gave up on the seventh column, screwed her little scroll into a ball and tossed it overboard. So much for you, my detested half sister! An oily missive from his father-in-law, Lucius Marcius Philippus, arch-fence-sitter and Epicure supreme. Rome was very quiet under the consul Vatia Isauricus and the urban praetor Gaius Trebonius. In fact, mourned Philippus in elegant prose, absolutely nothing was happening beyond wild reports that Pompeius had won a great victory at Dyrrachium and Caesar was on the run, a defeated man. It followed Servilia into the sea, danced away on the ripples created by the oar blades. So much for you too, Philippus, with your feet safely in both camps nephew-in-law of Caesar, father-in-law of Cato, Caesar's greatest enemy. Your news is stale, it sticks in my gullet. The real reason why he had never read his letters was the last one he read: the one from Marcia. His wife.

When Cornelia Metella defied tradition and set out to join Pompeius Magnus, I hungered desperately to follow her example. That I did not is Porcia's fault why did you have to own a daughter as fiercely devoted to the mos maiorum as you are yourself? When she caught me packing, she flew at me like a harpy, then went around the corner to see my father and demanded that he forbid me to go. Well, you know my father. Anything for peace. So Porcia had her wretched way and I still sit here in Rome. Marcus, meum mel, mea vita, I live alone in a vacuum of the spirit, wondering and worrying. Are you well? Do you ever think of me? Will I ever see you again? It is not fair that I should have spent a longer time married to Quintus Hortensius than both my marriages to you put together. We have never spoken of that exile to which you sentenced me, though I understood immediately why you did it. You did it because you loved me too much, and deemed your love for me a betrayal of those Stoic principles you hold dearer than your life. Or your wife. So when sheer senescence prompted Hortensius to ask for me in marriage, you divorced me and gave me to him with the connivance of my father, of course. I know that you took not one sestertius from the old man, but my father took ten million of them. His tastes are expensive. I saw my exile with Hortensius as evidence of the depth of your love for me four long, dreadful years! Four years! Yes, he was too old and enfeebled to force his attentions on me, but can you imagine how I felt as I sat for hours each day with Hortensius, cooing at his favorite pet fish, Paris? Missing you, longing for you, suffering your renunciation of me over and over again? And then, after he died and you took me as your wife a second time, I had but a few short months with you before you left Rome and Italy on one of your remorseless acts of duty. Is that fair, Marcus? I am but twenty-six years old, I have been married to two men, one twice, yet I am barren. Like Porcia and Calpurnia, I have no child. I know how much you detest reading my reproaches, so I will cease my complaining. If you were a different kind of man, I would not love you the way I do. There are three of us who mourn our missing men Porcia, Calpurnia, and I. Porcia? I hear you ask. Porcia, missing dead Bibulus? No, not Bibulus. Porcia misses her cousin Brutus. She loves him, I believe, quite as much as you love me, for she has your nature on fire with passions, all of them frozen by her absurd devotion to the teachings of Zeno. Who was Zeno, after all? A silly old Cypriot who denied himself all the glorious things that the gods gave us to enjoy, from laughter to good food. There speaks the Epicurean's child! As for Calpurnia, she misses Caesar. Eleven years his wife, yet only a few months actually with Caesar, who was philandering with your frightful sister until he left for Gaul. Since then nothing. We widows and wives are poorly served. Someone told me that you have neither shaved nor cut your hair since you left Italy, but I cannot imagine your wonderful, nobly Roman face as bewhiskered as a Jew's. Tell me why, Marcus, we women are taught to read and write, yet are always doomed to sit at home, waiting? I must go, I cannot see for tears. Please, I beg of you, write to me! Give me hope.

The sun was up; Cato was a painfully slow reader. Marcia's scroll was crumpled up, then skimmed across the sparkling water. So much for wives. His hands were shaking. Such a stupid, stupid letter! To love a woman with the consuming intensity of a funeral pyre is not a right act, cannot be a right act. Doesn't she understand that every one of her many letters says the same thing? Doesn't she realize that I will never write to her? What would I say? What is there to say?

No nose save his seemed to snuff that earthy tang in the air; everybody went about their business as if today were just another day. The morning wore on. Cato took a turn at the oars, then went back to stand at the rail straining his eyes. Nothing showed until the sun was directly overhead, when a thin, faint blue line appeared on the horizon. Just as Cato saw it, the sailor aloft at the masthead shrieked. "Land! Land!" His ship led the fleet, which swelled into a teardrop behind it. No time to step into his tiny boat himself, so he sent an eager pilus prior centurion, Lucius Gratidius, in his stead to instruct the captains not to get ahead of him, and to watch carefully for shoals, reefs, hidden rocks. The water had suddenly become very shallow and clear as the best Puteoli glass, with the same faintly blue sheen now that the sun was not glancing off it. The land came up extremely fast because it was so flat, not a phenomenon Romans were used to, accustomed to sailing regions where high mountains reared in close proximity to the sea and thus made land visible many miles from shore. To Cato's relief, the westering sun revealed country more green than ocher; if grasses grew, then there was some hope of civilization. From Gnaeus Pompey's pilots he knew that there was only one settlement on the eight-hundred-mile coast between Alexandria and Cyrenaica: Paraetonium, whence Alexander the Great had set off south to the fabled oasis of Ammon, there to converse with the Egyptian Zeus. Paraetonium, we must find Paraetonium! But is it west of here, or is it east? Cato scraped in the bottom of a sack and managed to gather a small handful of chickpea they had very little left then threw the legumes into the water as he prayed: "O all ye gods, by whichever name ye wish to be known, of whatever sex or no sex ye are, let me guess correctly!" A brisk gust from Corus came on the echo of his plea; he went to the captain, stationed on a tiny poop between the rope-bound tillers of the massive rudder oars. "Captain, we turn east before the wind." Not four miles down the coast Cato's farsighted eyes took in the sight of two slight bluffs with the entrance to a bay between them, and one or two mud-brick houses. If this were Paraetonium, then the town had to be inside the harbor. The entrance was mined with rocks, but a clear passage lay almost in its middle; two sailors shoved at the tillers and Cato's ship turned, oars inboard for the maneuver, to sail into a beautiful haven. He gasped, goggled. Three Roman ships already lay at anchor! Who, who? Too few for it to be Labienus, so who? On the back reaches of the bay was a mud-brick, tiny town. Size didn't matter, though. Wherever people lived collectively, there was bound to be potable water and some provisions for sale. And he would soon find out which Romans owned the ships, all flying the SPQR pennant from their mastheads. Important Romans. He went ashore in his tiny boat accompanied by the pilus prior centurion, Lucius Gratidius; the entire population of Paraetonium, some six hundred souls, was lined up along a beach, marveling at the sight of fifty big ships making port one at a time. That he might not be able to communicate with the Paraetonians did not occur to him; everyone everywhere spoke Greek, the lingua mundi. The first words he heard, however, were Latin. Two people stepped forward, a handsome woman in her middle twenties and a stripling youth. Cato gaped, but before he could say anything the woman had fallen on his neck in floods of tears, and the youth was attempting to wring his hand off. "My dear Cornelia Metella! And Sextus Pompeius! Does this mean that Pompeius Magnus is here?" he asked. A question which caused Cornelia Metella to weep harder, and set Sextus Pompey to crying too. Their grief held a message: Pompey the Great was dead. While he stood with Pompey the Great's fourth wife twined around his neck watering his purple-bordered toga and tried to extricate his hand from Sextus Pompey's grasp, a rather important-looking man in a tailored Greek tunic walked up to them, a small entourage in his wake. "I am Marcus Porcius Cato." "I am Philopoemon" was the answer, given with an expression that said Cato's name meant absolutely nothing to a Paraetonian. Indeed this was the end of the world! Over dinner in Philopoemon's modest house he learned the awful story of Pompey the Great in Pelusium, of the retired centurion Septimius who had lured Pompey into a boat and to his death, which Cornelia Metella and Sextus had witnessed from their ship. Worst news of all, Septimius had chopped off Pompey's head, put it in a jar, then left the body lying on the mud flats. "Our freedman Philip and the boy who was his slave had gone in the dinghy with my father, but they survived by running away," Sextus said. "We could do nothing to help Pelusium harbor was full of the Egyptian king's navy, and several warships were bearing down on us. Either we stayed to be captured and probably killed too, or we put to sea." He shrugged, his mouth quivering. "I knew which course my father would have wanted, so we fled." Though her fountain of tears had dried up, Cornelia Metella contributed little to the conversation. How much she has changed, Cato thought, he who rarely noticed such things. She had been the haughtiest of patrician aristocrats, daughter of the august Metellus Scipio, first married to the elder son of Pompey's partner in two of his consulships, Marcus Licinius Crassus. Then Crassus and her husband had set out to invade the Kingdom of the Parthians, and perished at Carrhae. The widowed Cornelia Metella had become a political pawn, for Pompey was widowed too, the death of Caesar's Julia slipping rapidly into the past. So the boni, including Cato, had plotted to detach Pompey the Great from Caesar; the only way, they felt, to pull Pompey on to the boni side was to give him Cornelia Metella as his new wife. Extremely sensitive about his own obscure origins (Picentine, but with the awful stigma of Gaul added to that), Pompey always married women of the highest nobility. And who was higher than Cornelia Metella? A descendant of Scipio Africanus and Aemilius Paullus, no less. Perfect for boni purposes! The scheme had worked. His gratitude patent, Pompey had espoused her eagerly, and became, if not one of the boni, at least their close ally. In Rome she had continued as she began, insufferably proud, cool if not downright cold, clearly regarding herself as her father's sacrificial animal. Marriage to a Pompeius from Picenum was a shocking comedown, even if this particular Pompeius was the First Man in Rome. He just didn't have the blood, so Cornelia Metella had gone secretly to the Vestal Virgins and obtained some of their medicine made from diseased rye, aborted a pregnancy. But here in Paraetonium she was different, very different. Soft. Sweet. Gentle. When finally she did speak, it was to tell Cato of Pompey's plans after his defeat at Pharsalus. "We were going to Serica," she said sadly. "Gnaeus had had his fill of Rome, of life anywhere around the margins of Our Sea. So we intended to enter Egypt, then journey to the Red Sea and take ship for Arabia Felix. From there we were going to India, and from India to Serica. My husband thought that the Sericans might be able to use the skills of a great Roman military man." "I am sure they would have found a use for him," Cato said dubiously. Who knew what the Sericans might have made of a Roman? Certainly they would not have known him from a Gaul, a German or a Greek. Their land was so far away, so mysterious that the only information Herodotus had to offer about them was that they made a fabric from the spinnings of a grub, and that he called it bombyx. Its Latin name was vestis serica. On rare occasions a specimen had come through the Sarmatian trade routes of the King of the Parthians, but it was so precious that the only Roman known to have had a piece was Lucullus. How far had Pompeius Magnus fallen, to contemplate such a course of action! Truly he was not a Roman of Rome. "I wish I could go home!" Cornelia Metella sighed. "Then go home!" Cato barked; this was the kind of evening he deemed wasted, when he had men to put into camp. Shocked, she stared at him in dismay. "How can I go home when Caesar controls the world? He will proscribe our names will be at the top of his proscription list, and our heads will bring some disgusting slave his freedom plus a small fortune for informing on us. Even if we live, we will be impoverished." "Gerrae!" Cato said roundly. "My dear woman, Caesar is no Sulla in that respect. His policy is clemency and very clever it is too. He intends to earn no hatred from businessmen or his fellow nobles, he intends that they kiss his feet in abject thanks for sparing their lives and letting them keep their property. I admit that Magnus's fortune will be confiscate, but Caesar won't touch your wealth. As soon as the winds permit it, I recommend that you go home." He turned sternly to Sextus Pompey. "As for you, young man, the choice is clear. Escort your stepmother as far as Brundisium or Tarentum, then join Caesar's enemies, who will gather in Africa Province." Cornelia Metella swallowed. "There is no need for Sextus to escort me," she said. "I take your word for Caesar's clemency, Marcus Cato, and will sail alone." Declining Philopoemon's offer of a bed, Cato drew the ethnarch of Paraetonium aside as he prepared to leave. "Whatever you can spare us by way of water or food, we will pay for in silver coin," he said. Philopoemon looked as much worried as delighted. "We can give you all the water you want, Marcus Cato, but we haven't much food to spare. There is famine in Egypt, so we haven't been able to buy in wheat. But we have sheep we can sell you, and cheese from our goats. While you're here, we can give your men green salads from several kinds of wild parsley, but it doesn't keep." "Whatever you can spare will be appreciated." On the morrow he left Lucius Gratidius and Sextus Pompey to deal with the men, himself preferring to have more conversation with Philopoemon. The more he could learn about Africa, the better. Paraetonium existed to provide a port for the many pilgrims who journeyed to the oasis of Ammon to consult its oracle, as famous on this shore of Our Sea as Delphi was in Greece. Ammon lay two hundred miles to the south across a rainless desert of long sand dunes and outcrops of bare rocks; there the Marmaridae roamed from well to well with their camels and goats, their big leather tents. When Cato asked of Alexander the Great, Philopoemon frowned. "No one knows," he said, "whether Alexander went to Ammon to ask a question of the oracle, or whether Ra, lord of the Egyptian gods, had summoned him to the oasis to deify him." He looked pensive. "All the Ptolemies since the first Soter have made the pilgrimage, whether on the throne of Egypt or satrap in Cyrenaica. We are tied to Egypt through its kings and queens, the oasis, but our blood is Phoenician, not Macedonian or Greek." As Philopoemon chattered on, now about the herds of camels the town kept to hire out to pilgrims, Cato's thoughts strayed. No, we cannot stay here for very long, but if we sail while Corus is blowing, we will wind up in Alexandria. After hearing how the boy king dealt with Pompeius Magnus, I do not think Egypt is safe for Romans opposing Caesar. "While Corus blows, impossible," he muttered. Philopoemon looked puzzled. "Corus?" " Argestes," Cato said, giving the wind its Greek name. "Oh, Argestes! It will soon vanish, Marcus Cato. Aparctias is due any day." Aparctias, Aquilo the Etesian winds! Yes, of course! It is the middle of October by the calendar, the middle of Quinctilis by the seasons. The Dog Star is about to rise! "Then," Cato said with a huge sigh of relief, "we will not need to abuse your hospitality much longer, Philopoemon." Nor did they. The following day, the Ides of October, the Etesian winds arrived with the dawn. Cato busied himself in getting Cornelia Metella aboard her three ships, then waved her off feeling unusually tender emotions; she had donated him Pompey the Great's nest egg, two hundred talents of silver coins. Five million sesterces!

The fleet set sail on the third day of the Etesians, the men happier than they had been since Pompey had enlisted them in his grand army of the civil war. Most were in their late twenties and had served Pompey in Spain for years they were veterans, therefore enormously valuable troops. Like other rankers, they lived in ignorance of the hideous differences between Rome's political factions; ignorant too of Cato's reputation as a crazed fanatic. They thought him a splendid fellow friendly, cheerful, compassionate. Not adjectives even Favonius would have attached to his dearest amicus, Marcus Porcius Cato. They had greeted Sextus Pompey with joy, and cast lots to see whose ship would carry him. For Cato had no intention of accommodating Pompey the Great's younger son on his own vessel; Lucius Gratidius and the two philosophers were as much company as he could stomach. Cato stood on the poop as his ship led the fifty out of Paraetonium's bay with the wind on the leading edge of his sail and the first shift of oarsmen-soldiers pulling with a will. They had food enough for a twenty-day voyage; two of the local farmers had grown bumper crops of chickpea in good winter rains as well as enough wheat to feed Paraetonium. They had been happy to sell most of the chickpea to Cato. No bacon, alas! It took an Italian oak forest plump with acorns to breed good bacon porkers. Oh, pray that someone in Cyrenaica kept pigs! Salt pork was far better than no pork at all. The five-hundred-mile voyage west to Cyrenaica took just eight days, the fleet far enough out to sea not to have to worry about reefs or shoals; Cyrenaica was a huge bump in the north African coast, thrusting it much closer to Crete and Greece than the interminably straight coast between it and the Nilus Delta. Their first landfall was Chersonnesus, a cluster of seven houses festooned in fishing nets; Lucius Gratidius rowed ashore and learned that Darnis, immensely bigger, was only a few miles farther on. But "immense" to a village of fishermen turned out to be about the size of Paraetonium; there was water to be had, but no food other than catches of fish. Eastern Cyrenaica. About fifteen hundred miles to go. Cyrenaica had been a fief of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt until its last satrap, Ptolemy Apion, had bequeathed it to Rome in his will. A reluctant heir, Rome had done nothing to annex it or so much as put a garrison there, let alone send it a governor. Living proof that lack of government simply allowed people to wax fat on no taxes and do what they always did with greater personal prosperity, Cyrenaica became a legendary backwater of the world, a kind of honeyed dreamland. As it was off the beaten track and had no gold, gems or enemies, it didn't attract unpleasant people. Then thirty years ago the great Lucullus had visited it, and things happened fast. Romanization began, the taxes were imposed, and a governor of praetorian status was appointed to administer it in conjunction with Crete. But as the governor preferred to live in Crete, Cyrenaica carried on much as it always had, a golden backwater, the only real difference those Roman taxes. Which turned out to be quite bearable, for the droughts which plagued other lands supplying grain to Italy were usually out of step with any droughts in Cyrenaica. A big grain producer, Cyrenaica suddenly had a market on the far side of Our Sea. The empty grain fleets came down from Ostia, Puteoli and Neapolis on the Etesian winds, and by the time the harvest was in and the ships loaded, Auster the south wind blew the fleets back to Italy.

When Cato arrived, it was thriving on the drought conditions that plagued every land from Greece to Sicily; the winter rains had been excellent, the wheat, almost ready for harvesting now, was coming in a hundredfold, and enterprising Roman grain merchants were beginning to arrive with their fleets. A wretched nuisance for Cato, who found Darnis, small as it was, stuffed with ships already. Clutching his long hair, he was forced to sail on to Apollonia, the port serving Cyrene city, the capital of Cyrenaica. There he would find harbor! He did, but only because Labienus, Afranius and Petreius had arrived before him with a hundred and fifty transports, and had evicted the grain fleets into the roads on the high seas. As Cato on the poop of his leading ship was an unmistakable figure, Lucius Afranius, in charge of the harbor, let him bring his fleet in. "What a business!" Labienus snarled as he walked Cato at a fast clip to the house he had commandeered off Apollonia's chief citizen. "Here, have some decent wine," he said once they entered the room he had made his study. The irony was lost on Cato. "Thank you, no." Jaw dropped, Labienus stared. "Go on! You're the biggest soak in Rome, Cato!" "Not since I left Corcyra," Cato answered with dignity. "I vowed to Liber Pater that I wouldn't touch a drop of wine until I brought my men safely to Africa Province." "A few days here, and you'll be back guzzling." Labienus went to pour himself a generous measure, and downed it without pausing to breathe. "Why?" Cato asked, sitting down. "Because we're not welcome. The news of Magnus's defeat and death has flown around Our Sea as if a bird carried it, and all Cyrenaica can think about is Caesar. They're convinced he's hard on our heels, and they're terrified of offending him by seeming to aid his enemies. So Cyrene has locked its gates, and Apollonia is intent on doing whatever harm it can to us a situation made worse after we sent the grain fleets packing." When Afranius and Petreius entered with Sextus Pompey in tow, all that had to be explained again; Cato sat, wooden-faced, his mind churning. Oh, ye gods, I am back among the barbarians! My little holiday is over. A part of him had looked forward to visiting Cyrene and its Ptolemaic palace, rumored to be fabulous. Having seen Ptolemy the Cyprian's palace in Paphos, he was keen to compare how the Ptolemies had lived in Cyrenaica against how they had lived in Cyprus. A great empire two hundred years ago, Egypt, which had even owned some of the Aegean islands as well as all Palestina and half of Syria. But the Aegean islands and the lands in Syria-Palestina had gone a century ago; all the Ptolemies had managed to hang on to were Cyprus and Cyrenaica. From which Rome had forced them out quite recently. Well do I remember, reflected Cato, who had been Rome's agent of annexation in Cyprus, that Cyprus had not welcomed Roman rule. From Orient to Occident is never easy. Labienus had found 1,000 Gallic cavalry and 2,000 infantrymen lurking in Crete, rounded them up with his customary ruthlessness and appropriated every vessel Crete owned. With 1,000 horses, 2,000 mules and 4,000 men he had noncombatants and slaves as well crammed into two hundred ships, he sailed from Cretan Apollonia to Cyrenaican Apollonia (there were towns named after Apollo all over the world) in just three days, having had no other choice than to wait for the Etesian winds. "Our situation goes from bad to worse," Cato told Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion as the three settled into a tiny house Statyllus had found abandoned; Cato refused to dispossess anyone, and cared not a rush for comfort. "I understand," Statyllus said, fussing around the much older Athenodorus Cordylion, who was losing weight and developing a cough. "We should have realized that Cyrenaica would side with the winner." "Very true," Cato said bitterly. He clutched at his beard, pulled it. "There are perhaps four nundinae of the Etesian winds left," he said, "so somehow I have to push Labienus into moving on. Once the south wind begins to blow, we will never reach Africa Province, and Labienus is more determined to sack Cyrene than he is to do anything constructive about continuing to wage war." "You will prevail," said Statyllus comfortably.

That Cato did prevail was thanks to the goddess Fortuna, who seemed to be on his side. The following day word came from the port of Arsino, some hundred miles to the west; Gnaeus Pompey had kept his word and shipped another 6,500 of Cato's wounded to Africa. They had landed in Arsino and found the local inhabitants very glad to see them. "Therefore we leave Apollonia and sail to Arsino," Cato said to Labienus in his harshest voice. "A nundinum from now," said Labienus. "Eight more days? Are you mad? Do what you like, you utter fool, but tomorrow I take my own fleet and leave for Arsino!" The snarl became a roar, but Cato was no Cicero. He had cowed Pompey the Great, and he wasn't a bit afraid of barbarians like Titus Labienus. Who stood, fists clenched, teeth bared, his black eyes glaring into that cool grey steel. Then he sagged, shrugged. "Very well, we leave for Arsino tomorrow," he said. Where the goddess Fortuna deserted Cato, who found a letter from Gnaeus Pompey waiting for him.

Things in Africa Province look very good, Marcus Cato. If I keep on going at the rate I am, I will have my fleets settled into good bases along the southern coast of Sicily, with one or two of the Vulcaniae Isles to deal with grain from Sardinia. In fact, things look so good that I have decided to leave my father-in-law Libo in charge, and take myself off to Africa Province with a great number of soldiers who have turned up in western Macedonia and asked me to let them fight on against Caesar. Therefore, Marcus Cato, though it pains me to do it, I must ask that you return all your ships to me at once. They are desperately needed, and I'm afraid that unwounded troops must take precedence over your own, wounded men. As soon as I can, I will send you another fleet large enough to get your fellows to Africa Province, though I warn you that you must sail far out to sea. The great bite in the African coast between Cyrenaica and our province is not navigable no charts, and waters choked with hazards. I wish you well, and have made an offering that you and your wounded, having suffered so much, do reach us.

No ships. Nor, Cato knew, could they possibly return before Auster made it impossible for them to return. "Be my fate as it may, Titus Labienus, I must insist that you send your ships to Gnaeus Pompeius as well," Cato brayed loudly. "I will not!" Cato turned to Afranius. "Lucius Afranius, as a consular you outrank us. Next comes Marcus Petreius, then me. Titus Labienus, though you have been a propraetor under Caesar, you were never an elected praetor. Therefore the decision does not rest with you. Lucius Afranius, what do you say?" Afranius was Pompey the Great's man to the core; Labienus mattered only in that he was a fellow Picentine and a client of Pompey's. "If Magnus's son requires our ships, Marcus Cato, then he must have them." "So here we sit in Arsino with nine thousand infantry and a thousand horse. Since you're so devoted to the mos maiorum, Cato, what do you suggest we do?" Labienus asked, very angry. Well aware that Labienus knew that he was too loathed by the troops to appeal to them as a Caesar might have, Cato relaxed. The worst was over. "I suggest," he said calmly, "that we walk." No one had the wind to reply, though Sextus Pompey's eyes lit up, sparkled. "Between reading Gnaeus Pompeius's letter and seeking this council," Cato said, "I made a few enquiries of the locals. If there is nothing else a Roman soldier can do, he can march. It seems the distance from Arsino to Hadrumetum, the first big town in Africa Province, is somewhat less than the fifteen hundred miles between Capua and Further Spain. About fourteen hundred miles. I estimate that resistance in Africa Province will not fully coalesce until May of next year. Here in Cyrenaica we have all heard that Caesar is in Alexandria and mired down in a war there, and that King Pharnaces of Cimmeria is running rampant in Asia Minor. Gnaeus Calvinus is marching to contain him, with two legions of Publius Sestius's and little else. I am sure you know Caesar in the field better than any of us, Labienus, so do you really think that, once he has tidied up Alexandria, he will go west when he leaves?" "No," said Labienus. "He'll march to extricate Calvinus and give pharnaces such a walloping that he'll flee back to Cimmeria with his tail between his legs." "Good, we agree," Cato said, quite pleasantly. "Therefore, my fellow curule magistrates and senators, I will go to our troops and ask for a democratic decision as to whether we march the fourteen hundred miles to Hadrumetum." "No need for that, Afranius can decide," Labienus said, and spat his mouthful of wine on to the floor. "No one can make this decision except those we are going to ask to take this journey!" Cato yelled, at his most aggressive. "Do you really want ten thousand unwilling, resentful men, Titus Labienus? Do you? Well, I do not! Rome's soldiers are citizens. They have a vote in our elections, no matter how worthless that vote might be if they are poor. But many of them are not poor, as Caesar well knew when he sent them on furlough to Rome to vote for him or his preferred candidates. These men of ours are tried-and-true veterans who have accumulated wealth from sharing in booty they matter politically as well as militarily! Besides, they lent every sestertius in their legion banks to help fund the Republic's war against Caesar, so they are our creditors too. Therefore I will go to them and ask." Accompanied by Labienus, Afranius, Petreius and Sextus Pompey, Cato went to the huge camp on Arsinos fringe, had the troops assembled in the square to one side of the general stores, and explained the situation. "Think about it overnight, and have an answer for me at dawn tomorrow!" he shouted. At dawn they had their answer ready, and a representative to deliver it: Lucius Gratidius. "We will march, Marcus Cato, but on one condition." "What condition?" "That you are in the command tent, Marcus Cato. In a battle we will gladly take orders from our generals, our legates, our tribunes, but on a march through country no one knows, with no roads and no settlements, only one man can prevail you," said Lucius Gratidius sturdily. The five noblemen stared at Gratidius in astonishment, even Cato: an answer no one had expected. "If the consular Lucius Afranius agrees that your request is in keeping with the mos maiorum, I will lead you," said Cato. "I agree," Afranius said hollowly; Cato's comment about the fact that Pompey the Great was debtor to his own army had hit Afranius (and Petreius) hard; he had lent Pompey a fortune.

* * *

"At least," said Sextus to the housebound Cato the next day, "you administered such a kick to Labienus's arse that he got off it. Did he ever!" "What are you talking about, Sextus?" "He spent the night loading his cavalry and horses aboard a hundred of his ships, then sailed at dawn for Africa Province with the money, all the wheat Arsino would sell him, and his thumb to his nose." Sextus grinned. "Afranius and Petreius went as well." A huge gladness invaded Cato, who actually forgot himself enough to grin back. "Oh, what a relief! Though I'm concerned for your brother, left a hundred ships short." "I'm concerned for him too, Cato, but not concerned enough to want the fellatores marching with us Labienus and his precious horses! You don't need a thousand horses on this expedition, they drink water by the amphora and they're fussy eaters." Sextus gave a sigh. "It's his taking all the money will hurt us most." "No," Cato said serenely, "he didn't take all the money. I still have the two hundred talents your dear stepmother gave me. I just forgot to mention their existence to Labienus. Fear not, Sextus, we'll be able to buy what we need to survive." "No wheat," Sextus said gloomily. "He cleaned Arsino out of the early harvest, and with the grain fleets hovering, we won't get any of the late harvest." "Given the amount of water we'll have to carry, Sextus, we can't carry wheat as well. No, this expedition's food will be on the hoof, you might say. Sheep, goats and oxen." "Oh, no!" Sextus cried. "Meat? Nothing but meat?" "Nothing but meat and whatever edible greens we can find," Cato said firmly. "I daresay Afranius and Petreius decided to risk the sea because they suddenly wondered if, with Cato in the command tent, they'd be allowed to ride while others walked." "I take it that no one is going to ride?" "No one. Tempted at that news to hurry after Labienus?" "Not I! Notice, by the way, that he took no Roman troops with him. The cavalry is Gallic, they're not citizens." "Well," said Cato, rising to his feet, "having made my notes, it's time to start organizing the march. It is now the beginning of November, and I estimate that preparations will take two months. Which means we'll start out in early January." "The beginning of autumn by the seasons. Still awfully hot." "I am told that the coast is endurable, and we must stick to the coast or get hopelessly lost." "Two months' preparation seems excessive." "Logistics demand it. For one thing, I have to commission the weaving of ten thousand shady hats. Imagine what life would be like if Sulla had not made the shady hat famous! Its value in the sun of these latitudes is inestimable. Detest Sulla though all good men must, I have him to thank for that piece of common sense. The men must march as comfortably as possible, which means we take all our mules and those Labienus left behind. A mule can find forage wherever a plant can grow, and the local people have assured me that there will be forage along the coast. So the men will have pack animals for their gear. One thing about a march into uninhabited terra incognita, Sextus, is that mail shirts, shields and helmets need not be worn, and we need not build a camp every night. The few natives there are will not dare to attack a column of ten thousand men." "I hope you're right," said Sextus Pompey devoutly, "because I can't imagine Caesar letting the men march unarmed." "Caesar is a military man, I am not. My guide is instinct."

Yielding up ten talents of Cornelia Metella's gift enabled the men to eat bread during those two months of preparation, sop it in good olive oil; enquiries produced bacon, and Cato still had a great deal of chickpea. His own thousand men were superbly fit, thanks to almost a month of rowing, but between their wounds and inertia, the later arrivals were weaker. Cato sent for all his centurions and issued orders: every man intending to march had to submit himself to a rigorous program of drill and exercise, and if, when January arrived, he was not fit, he would be left in Arsino to fend for himself. The dioiketes of Arsino, one Socrates, was a great help, a treasure house of good advice. Scholarly and fair-minded, his imagination had soared the moment Cato told him what he intended to do. "Oh, Marcus Cato, a new anabasis!" he squawked. "I am no Xenophon, Socrates, and my ten thousand men are good Roman citizen soldiers, not Greek mercenaries prepared to fight for the Persian enemy," Cato said, trying these days to moderate his voice and not offend people he needed. Thus he hoped that his tones were not indicative of the horror he felt at being likened to that other, very famous march of ten thousand men almost four hundred years ago. "Besides, my march will fade from the annals of history. I do not have Xenophon's compulsion to explain away treachery in writing because no treachery exists. Therefore I will write no commentary of my march of the ten thousand." "Nonetheless, it is a very Spartan thing you do." "It is a very sensible thing I do" was Cato's answer. To Socrates he confided his greatest worry that the men, raised on an Italian diet of starches, oils, greens and fruits, with the sole meat for a poor man a bit of bacon for flavoring, would not be able to tolerate a diet consisting of meat. "But you must surely know of laserpicium," said Socrates. "Yes, I know of it." What was visible of Cato's face between the hair and the beard screwed itself up in revulsion. "The kind of digestive men like my father-in-law pay a fortune for. It is said to help a man's stomach recover from a surfeit of" he drew a breath, looked amazed "meat! A surfeit of meat! Socrates, Socrates, I must have laserpicium, but how can I afford enough of it to dose ten thousand men every single day for months?" Socrates laughed until the tears ran down his face. "Where you are going, Marcus Cato, is a wilderness of silphium, a scrubby little bush that your mules, goats and oxen will feast on. From silphium a people called the Psylli extract laserpicium. They live on the western edge of Cyrenaica, and have a tiny port town, Philaenorum. Were a surfeit of meat a dietary custom around Your Sea, the Psylli would be a great deal richer than they are. It is the canny merchants who visit Philaenorum who make the big profits, not the Psylli." "Do any of them speak Greek?" "Oh, yes. They have to, else they'd get nothing for their laserpicium." The next day Cato was off to Philaenorum on a horse, with Sextus Pompey galloping to catch him up. "Go back and be useful in the camp," Cato said sternly. "You may order everyone around as much as you like, Cato," Sextus caroled, "but I am my father's son, and dying of curiosity. So when Socrates said that you were off to buy whole talents of laserpicium from people called Psylli, I decided that you needed better company than Statyllus and Athenodorus Cordylion." "Athenodorus is ill," Cato said shortly. "Though I've had to forbid anyone to ride, I'm afraid I must relax that rule for Athenodorus. He can't walk, and Statyllus is his nursemaid."

Philaenorum turned out to be two hundred miles south, but the countryside was populated enough to procure a meal and a bed each night, and Cato found himself glad of Sextus's cheerful, irreverent company. However, he thought as they rode the last fifty miles, I see a hint of what we must contend with. Though there is grazing for stock, it is a barren wasteland. "The one grace," said Nasamones, leader of the Psylli, "is the presence of groundwater. Which is why silphium grows so well. Grasses don't because their root systems can't burrow deeply enough to find a drink silphium has a little taproot. Only when you cross the salt pans and marshes between Charax and Leptis Major will you need all the water you can carry. There is more salt desert between Sabrata and Thapsus, but that is a shorter distance and there is a Roman road for the last part of the way." "So there are settlements?" Cato asked, brightening. "Between here and Leptis Major, six hundred miles to the west, only Charax." "How far is Charax?" "Around two hundred miles, but there are wells and oases on the shore, and the people are my own Psylli." "Do you think," Cato asked diffidently, "that I could hire fifty Psylli to accompany us all the way to Thapsus? Then, if we encounter people who have no Greek, we will be able to parley. I want no tribes afraid that we are invading their lands." "The price of hire will be expensive," said Nasamones. "Two silver talents?" "For that much, Marcus Cato, you may have us all!" "No, fifty of you will be enough. Just men, please." "Impossible!" Nasamones shot back, smiling. "Extracting laserpicium from silphium is women's work, and that is what you must do extract it as you march. The dose is a small spoonful per day per man, you'd never be able to carry half enough. Though I'll throw in ten Psylli men free of charge to keep the women in order and deal with snakebites and scorpion stings." Sextus Pompey went ashen, gulped in terror. "Snakes?" He shuddered. "Scorpions?" "In great numbers," Nasamones said, as if snakes and scorpions were just everyday nuisances. "We treat the bites by cutting into them deeply and sucking the poison out, but it is easier said than done, so I advise you to use my men, they are experts. If the bite is properly treated, few men die only women, children, and the aged or infirm." Right, thought Cato grimly, I will have to keep sufficient mules free of cargo to bear men who are bitten. But my thanks, gracious Fortuna, for the Psylli! "And don't you dare," he said savagely to Sextus on the way back to Arsino, "say one word about snakes or scorpions to a single soul! If you do, I'll send you in chains to King Ptolemy."

The hats were woven, Arsino and the surrounding countryside denuded of its donkeys. For, Cato discovered from Socrates and Nasamones, mules would drink too much, eat too much. Asses, smaller and hardier, were the burden beasts of choice. Luckily no farmer or merchant minded trading his asses for mules; these were Roman army mules, bred from the finest stock. Cato acquired 4,000 asses in return for his 3,000 mules. For the wagons he took oxen, but it turned out that sheep were impossible to buy. In the end he was forced to settle for 2,000 cattle and 1,000 goats. This is not a march, it is an emigration, he thought dourly; how Labienus, safe in Utica by now, must be laughing! But I will show him! If I die in the effort, I will get my Ten Thousand to Africa Province fit to fight! For ten thousand there were; Cato took his noncombatants with him as well. No Roman general asked his troops to march, build, fight and care for themselves. Each century held a hundred men, but only eighty of them were soldiers; the other twenty were noncombatant servants who ground the grain, baked the bread, handed out water on the march, cared for the century's beasts and wagon, did the laundry and cleaning. They were not slaves, but Roman citizens who were deemed unsuitable soldier material mentally dull yokels who received a tiny share of the booty as well as the same wages and rations as the soldiers. While the Cyrenaican women labored over the hats, Cyrenaican men were put to making water skins; earthenware amphorae, with their pointed bottoms and a shape designed for setting in a frame or a thick bed of sawdust, were too cumbersome to strap on panniers astride a donkey's back. ''No wine?" asked Sextus, dismayed. "No, not a drop of wine," Cato answered. "The men will be drinking water, and so will we. Athenodorus will have to go without his little invalid fortification."

Two days into January the gigantic migration commenced its walk, cheered by the entire population of Arsino. Not a neat military column on the march, rather a wandering mass of animals and tunic-clad men with big straw hats on their heads moving among the animals to keep them more or less in one enormous group as Cato headed south for Philaenorum and the Psylli. Though the sun blazed down at lingering summer heat, the pace, Cato soon learned, would not enervate his men. Ten miles a day, set by the animals. But though Marcus Porcius Cato had never generaled troops or been thought of by noble Rome, perpetually exasperated by his stubbornness and single-mindedness, as a person with any common sense whatsoever, Cato turned out to be the ideal commander of a migration. Eyes everywhere, he observed and adapted to mistakes no one, even Caesar, could have foreseen. At dawn on the second day his centurions were instructed to make sure every man's caligae were laced ruthlessly tight around his ankles; they were walking over unpaved land full of small potholes, often concealed, and if a man sprained an ankle or tore a ligament, he became a burden. By the end of the first nundinum, not yet halfway to Philaenorum, Cato had worked out a system whereby each century took charge of a certain number of asses, cattle and goats, designated its own property; if it ate too well or drank too much, it could not filch stock or water from another, more prudent century. Each dusk the mass stopped, replenished its water from wells or springs, each man settling to sleep on his waterproof felt sagum, a circular cape with a hole in its middle through which, on a rainy or snowy march, he thrust his head. All the bread and chickpea Cato could carry went on this first segment of the march, for laserpicium would not be a part of the menu until Philaenorum. Ten miles a day. As well, then, that these first two hundred miles were through kinder country; they were the learning experience. After Philaenorum, things were going to get a lot worse. When by some miracle they reached Philaenorum in eighteen rather than twenty days, Cato gave the men three days of rest in a slipshod camp just behind a long, sandy beach. So people swam, fished, paid a precious sestertius to some Psylli woman for sex. All legionaries knew how to swim, it was a part of their boot-camp training who knew when someone like Caesar would order them to swim a lake or a mighty river? Naked and carefree, the men frolicked, gorged on fish. Let them, thought Cato, down swimming too. "I say!" Sextus exclaimed, looking at the naked Cato, "I never realized how well you're built!" "That," said the man with no sense of humor, "is because you are too young to remember the days when I wore no tunic under my toga to protest against the erosion of the mos maiorum."

* * *

Nor required to herd animals or participate in century doings, the centurions had other duties. Cato called them together and issued instructions about laserpicium and the coming all-meat diet. "You will eat no plant that the Psylli traveling with us say is inedible, and you will make sure that your men do the same, he yelled. "Each of you will be issued with a spoon and your century's supply of laserpicium, and every evening after the men have eaten their beef or goat, you will personally administer half of that spoon to each man. It will be your duty to accompany the Psylli women and two hundred noncombatants as they gather silphium and process it I understand that the plant has to be crushed, boiled and cooled, after which the laserpicium is skimmed off the top. Which means we need firewood in country devoid of all trees. Therefore you will ensure that every dead plant and the dried crushed plants are collected and carried for burning. Any man who attempts to violate a Psylli woman will be stripped of his citizenship, flogged and beheaded. I mean what I say." If the centurions thought he was finished, they were wrong. "One other point!" Cato roared. "Any man, no matter what his rank, who allows a goat to eat his hat, will have to go without a hat. That means sunstroke and death! As it happens, I have sufficient spare hats to replace those already eaten by goats, but I am about to run out. So let every man on this expedition take heed no hat, no life!" "That's telling them," said Sextus as he accompanied Cato to the house of Nasamones. "The only trouble, Cato, is that a goat determined to eat a hat is as difficult to elude as a whore with her sights on a rich old dodderer. How do you protect your hat?" "When it is not on my head, I am lying flat with my hat under me. What does it matter if the crown is crushed? Each morning I plump it out again, and tie it firmly on my head with the ribbons those sensible women who made it, gave it." "The word is out," Nasamones said, sorry that this wonderful circus treat was about to leave. "Until you reach Charax, my people will give you all the help they can." He coughed delicately. "Er may I offer you a little hint, Marcus Cato? Though you will need the goats, you will never get to Africa Province alive if you continue to let the goats roam free. They will not only eat your hats, they will eat your very clothes. A goat will eat anything. So tie them together as you walk, and pen them at night." "Pen them with what?" Cato cried, fed up with goats. "I note that every legionary has a palisade stake in his pack. It is long enough to serve as a staff for help covering uneven ground, so each man can carry it. Then at night he can use it as part of a fence to pen up the goats." "Nasamones," said Cato with a smile more joyous than any Sextus had ever seen, "truly I do not know what we would have done without you and the Psylli."

The beautiful mountains of Cyrenaica were gone; the Ten Thousand set off into a flat wilderness of silphium and little else, the ocher ground between those drab, greyish little bushes littered with rubble and fist-sized stones. The palisade stake staffs were proving invaluable. Nasamones had been right; the wells and soaks were frequent. However, they were not multiple, so it was impossible to water ten thousand men and seven thousand beasts each night that would have taken a river the size of the Tiber. So Cato had a century and its beasts refill their water skins at each well or soak they passed. This kept the spectacular horde moving, and at sundown everyone could settle for a meal of beef or goat boiled in seawater the whole Ten Thousand collected dead bushes and a sleep. Apart from a brazen sky and silphium scrub, their constant companion was the sea, a huge expanse of polished aquamarine, fluffed with white where rocks lurked, breaking in gentle wavelets upon beach after beach after beach. At the pace the animals moved, men could take a quick dip to cool off and keep clean; if all they could cover were ten miles a day, it would be the end of April before they reached Hadrumetum. And, thought Cato with huge relief, by that time the squabbles as to who will be commander-in-chief of our armies will be over. I can simply slide my Ten Thousand into the legions I myself will serve in some peaceful capacity. No Roman ate beef, no Roman ate goat; cattle had but one use, the production of leather, tallow and blood-and-bone fertilizer, and goats were for milk and cheese. One steer provided about five hundred pounds of edible parts, for the men ate all save the hide, the bones and the intestines. A pound of this per day per man no one could force himself to eat more saw the herd dwindle at the rate of twenty beasts a day for six days; the eight-day nundinum was made up with two days of goat, even worse. At first Cato had hoped that the goats would yield milk from which cheese might be made, but the moment Philaenorum was left behind, the nanny goats nursing kids rejected them and dried up. No goat expert, he supposed this had something to do with too much silphium and no straw hats or other delicacies. The long-horned cattle ambled along without annoying the human complement, their hip bones protruding starkly from their nether regions like vestigial wings, shriveled empty udders swinging beneath the cows. No cattle expert either, he supposed that bulls were a nuisance, since all the male cattle were castrated. Be it a tomcat, a dog, a ram, a billy goat or a bull, a wholly male beast wore itself thin and stringy pursuing sex. Scatter the seed, reap a bumper crop of kittens, pups, lambs, kids or calves. Some of this he voiced to Sextus Pompey, who was fascinated at aspects of the fanatical Marcus Porcius Cato that he fancied no other Roman had ever witnessed. Was this the man who had hectored his father into civil war? Who as a tribune of the plebs had vetoed any legislation likely to improve the way things worked? Who, when as young as Sextus was now, had intimidated the entire College of Tribunes of the Plebs into keeping that wretched column inside the Basilica Porcia? Why? Because Cato the Censor had put the column there; it was a part of the mos maiorum and could not be removed for any reason. Oh, all the stories he had heard about Cato the incorruptible urban quaestor Cato the drinker Cato the seller of his beloved wife! Yet here was that selfsame Cato musing about males and their hunger for sex, just as if he himself were not a male and a very well-endowed male at that. "Speaking for myself," Sextus said chattily, "I'm looking immensely forward to civilization. Civilization means women. I'm desperate for a woman already." The grey eyes turned his way looked frosty. "If a man is a man, Sextus Pompeius, he should be able to control his baser instincts. Four years are nothing," Cato said through his teeth. "Of course, of course!" Sextus said, beating a hasty retreat. Four years, eh? An interesting span to come up with! Marcia had spent four years as wife of Quintus Hortensius between two bouts of Cato. Did he love her, then? Did he suffer, then?

Charax was a village on an exquisite lagoon. Its inhabitants, a mixture of Psylli and an inland people called Garamantes, made a living diving for sponges and seed pearls; they consumed nothing but fish, sea urchins and a few vegetables grown in plots painstakingly watered by the women, who, upon seeing this appalling host descending, defended their produce shrilly, brandishing hoes and shrieking curses. Cato promptly issued an order forbidding the plundering of vegetables, then set to with the local chieftain to buy whatever greens he could. Nothing like enough, naturally, though the sight of his silver coins reconciled the women into harvesting everything larger than a sprout. Romans knew well that humankind could not survive unless fruits and green vegetables were a part of the diet, but so far Cato hadn't noticed any prodromal signs of scurvy in the men, who had gotten into the habit of chewing a sprig of silphium as they walked, to have some saliva. Whatever else silphium contained besides laserpicium evidently had the same effect as greens. We are but four hundred miles along our way, he thought, but I know in my bones that we are going to make it. One day off to swim and gorge on fish, then the Ten Thousand moved on into terrible country, flat as a planed board, a wearisome trek across salt pans and brackish marshes interspersed with a few stretches of silphium. Of wells or oases there were none for four hundred miles; forty days of pitiless sun, freezing nights, of scorpions and spiders. No one in Cyrenaica had mentioned spiders, which came as a horrific shock. Italy, Greece, the Gauls, the Spains, Macedonia, Thrace, Asia Minor that part of the globe Romans marched around, across, up, down, and sideways lacked big spiders. With the result that a highly decorated primipilus centurion, veteran of almost as many battles as Caesar, would faint dead away at the sight of a big spider. Well, the spiders of Phazania, as this region was called, were not big. They were enormous, as large in the body as a child's palm, with disgustingly hairy legs that folded under them malignly when they rested. "Oh, Jupiter!" Sextus cried, shaking one of the things out of his sagum before he folded it one morning. "I tell you straight, Marcus Cato, that had I known such creatures existed, I would gladly have suffered Titus Labienus! I only half believed my father when he said that he turned back within three days of reaching the Caspian Sea because of spiders, but now I know what he meant!" "At least," said Cato, who seemed unafraid, "their bite is merely painful because of the size of their nippers. They aren't poisonous like the scorpions." Secretly he was as frightened and revolted as anyone, but pride would not let him betray what he felt; if the Commander screamed and ran, what would the Ten Thousand think? If only there were woody plants to make fires at night for warmth! Who would ever have dreamed that a place so scorching during the day could grow so cold after the sun set? Suddenly, dramatically. One moment frying, the next shivering until the teeth chattered. But what tiny supplies of driftwood they combed from the beaches had to be saved for the cooking fires, silphium and meat. The Psylli men had earned their keep. No matter how the ground was scoured for scorpions, scorpions there were. Many men were stung, but after the Psylli had trained the century medics on how to slice into the flesh and suck vigorously, few men needed to ride donkeys. One Psylli woman, small and frail, was not so lucky. Her scorpion sting killed her, but not quickly, not kindly. The more difficult the going became, the more cheerful Cato became. How he managed to cover as much territory as he did in a day escaped Sextus; it seemed that he visited every small group, paused for a chat and a laugh, told them how wonderful they were. And they would swell, grin, pretend that they were having a merry holiday. Then plod on. Ten miles a day. The water skins shrank; not two days into that forty-day stretch had elapsed before Cato introduced water rationing, even to the animals. But if an occasional cow or steer keeled over, it was slaughtered on the spot to become that night's meal for some of the men. The asses, it seemed as indefatigable as Cato, just kept walking; that the water skin element in their cargoes was losing weight helped them. Yet thirst is terrible. The days and nights both reverberated to the anguished moos of cattle, the maas of goats, the sad squealing of donkeys. Ten miles a day. Occasionally storm clouds in the distance would torment them, looming ever blacker, drawing closer; once or twice, the grey slanted curtain of falling rain. But never near the Ten Thousand.

For Cato, in between the spurts of energy that pushed him to make his rounds of the men, the journey had become a kind of glory. Somewhere inside his core the desolate wastes his Stoic ethic had made of his Soul reached out to embrace the desolate wastes his body traversed. As if he floated on a sea of pain, yet the pain was purifying, even beautiful. At noon, when the sun turned the landscape to vast shimmering mists, he sometimes fancied that he saw his brother Caepio walking toward him, red hair glowing like a halo of flames, his unmistakable face a shining beacon of love. Once it was Marcia he saw, and once another, different dark woman; a stranger who he knew in his heart was his mother, though she had died two months after his birth, and he had never seen a portrait of her. Servilia transformed into goodness. Livia Drusa. Mama, Mama. His last vision occurred on the fortieth day out from Charax, heralded at dawn by Lucius Gratidius to say that the water skins had shrunk to nothing. It was Caepio again, but this time the beloved figure came so close that his outstretched arms almost touched Cato's. "Do not despair, little brother. There is water." Someone shrieked. The vision popped out of existence in a sudden roar from ten thousand parched throats: WATER!

During the space of a short afternoon the countryside changed with all the drama and shock of a thunderclap. The water marked the boundary of this change, a small but running stream so recent that the plants along its perpendicular banks were still infantile. Only then did Cato realize that they had been under way for eighty days, that autumn was beginning to change into winter, that the rains were starting to fall. One of those taunting storms had dropped its liquid blessing inland at a place where the contours permitted it to run, gurgling and absolutely pure, all the way down to the sea. The cattle herd had shrunk to less than fifty beasts, the goat herd to about a hundred. Caepio had given his message just in time. Humans and animals scattered along both banks of the rivulet for five miles to drink until sated, then, with stern warnings that no creature was to urinate or defecate anywhere near the stream, Cato allowed the Ten Thousand four days to fill the water skins, swim in the sea, fish, and sleep. He himself would have to find civilization and more food. "The land of Phazania is behind us," he said to Sextus as they stretched out in the sand after a dip. We have become brown as nuts, Sextus thought, gazing up and down the endless beach at the clusters of men. Even Cato, so fair, is deeply tanned. I daresay that means I look like a Syrian. "What land are we entering now?" he asked. "Tripolitana," Cato said. Why does he look so sad? Anyone would think that we have just walked out of the Elysian Fields, rather than out of Tartarus. Has he no idea that this water has come on the very last day before we started to die of thirst? That our food has run out too? Or did he conjure the water up out of his own will? Nothing about Cato surprises me anymore. "Tripolitana," he echoed. "Land of the three cities. Yet I know of no cities between Berenice and Hadrumetum." "The Greeks like things to sound familiar look at all the towns named Berenice, Arsino, Apollonia, Heracleia. So I imagine that when they built three villages of a few houses here where the coast is more fertile, they called the land "Three Cities.' Leptis Major, Oea and Sabrata, if Socrates and Nasamones are right. Odd, isn't it? The only Leptis I knew was Leptis Minor in our Africa Province." Tripolitana wasn't a lush cornucopia of plenty like Campania or the Baetis River valley in Further Spain, but from that first stream onward the country began to look as if people might show their faces. Silphium still grew, but joined now by softer plants the Psylli pronounced edible. Occasional strange trees dotted the flatness, branches spread in planes like the layers in a slate ledge, sparsely leafed with yellow-green fernlike fronds; they reminded Cato of the two trees which used to be in Uncle Drusus's peristyle garden, trees said to have been brought back to Rome by Scipio Africanus. If so, then in spring or summer they must bear fabulous scarlet or yellow blossoms. To Sextus Pompey, Cato appeared back to normal. "I think," he said, "that it's high time I hopped on an ass and trotted ahead to see which way the locals would like to see ten thousand men and a handful of goats go. Not, I am sure, through the middle of their wheat fields or peach orchards. I will try to buy some food. Fish is a pleasant change, but we need to replenish our stock of animals and how I hope! find grain for bread." Astride an ass, Sextus thought, sitting ruthlessly on his laughter, Cato is ridiculous. His legs are so long that he looks as if he's paddling the thing, rather than riding it. Ridiculous he may have appeared to Sextus, but when he came back four hours later the three men accompanying him were eyeing him in awed wonder. We have truly reached civilization, because they have heard of Marcus Porcius Cato. "We have a route for when we move on," he announced to Sextus, scissoring off his donkey with more ease than a man stepped over a low fence. "Here are Aristodemus, Phazanes and Phocias, who will serve as our agents in Leptis Major. Twenty miles away, Sextus, and I have been able to buy a flock of hogget sheep. Meat, I know, but at least a different kind. You and I are moving into Leptis itself, so pack your stuff." They passed through a village, Misurata, and so came to a town of twenty-thousand folk of Greek descent; Leptis Major or Magna. The harvest was all in, and it had been a good one. When Cato produced his silver coins, he bought enough wheat to put the men back on bread, and sufficient oil to moisten it. "Only six hundred miles to Thapsus, another hundred up to Utica, and of those, but two hundred waterless ones between Sabrata and Lake Tritonis, the beginning of our Roman province." Cato broke open a loaf of fresh, crusty bread. "At least having crossed Phazania, Sextus, I know how much water we will need on our last stretch of desert. We'll be able to load some of the asses with grain, unearth the mills and ovens from the wagons, and make bread whenever there is firewood. Isn't this a wonderful place? This once, I'm going to fill up on bread." The quintessential Stoic, thought Sextus, has feet of bread. But he's right. Tripolitana is a wonderful place. Though the season for grapes and peaches had finished, the locals dried them, which meant raisins to munch by the handful, and leathery slices of peach to suck on. Celery, onions, cabbage and lettuce abounded in the wild, seeded from domestic gardens. Women and children as well as men, the Tripolitanans wore tight trousers of densely woven wool and leather leggings over closed-toe boots as protection against snakes, scorpions and those massive spiders, known as tetragnathi. Almost all were engaged in agriculture wheat, olives, fruit, wine but kept sheep and cattle on common land deemed too poor for the plough. In Leptis there were businessmen and merchants, plus the inevitable contingent of Roman agents nosing to make a quick sestertius, but the feeling was of rustication, not of commerce. Inland lay a low plateau that was the commencement of three thousand miles of desert stretching both east and west as well as farther to the south than anybody knew. The Garamantes roamed it on camels, herding their goats and sheep, living in tents to exclude not the rain there was none but the sand. A high wind blasted its grains with a force that could kill by suffocation. A great deal more confident now that eight hundred miles lay behind them, the Ten Thousand left Leptis in high spirits.

The two-hundred-mile expanse of salt pans took only nineteen days to cross; though lack of firewood prevented the baking of bread, Cato had acquired as many sheep as cattle to vary the all-meat diet in a better way. No more goats! If I never see another goat again as long as I live, vowed Cato, I will count myself well satisfied. A sentiment his men echoed, especially Lucius Gratidius, upon whom had devolved the goats. Lake Tritonis formed the unofficial boundary of the Roman African province a disappointment, as its waters were bitter with natron, a substance akin to salt. Because an inferior sort of murex populated the sea just east of it, a factory for the manufacture of purple-dye sat on its shore alongside a stinking tower of empty shells and the rotting remains of the creatures that had lived inside them. The purple dye was extracted from a small tube in the murex body, which meant a lot of leftovers. However, the lake marked the beginning of a properly surveyed and paved Roman road. Laughing and chattering, the Ten Thousand hustled past the festering factory as fast as they could, prancing all over the road. Where there was a road, was also Rome. Outside Thapsus, Athenodorus Cordylion collapsed and died, so suddenly that Cato, elsewhere, didn't reach him in time to say goodbye. Weeping, Cato saw to the building of a driftwood pyre, offered libations to Zeus and a coin to Charon the ferryman, then took up his staff and set off again ahead of his men. So few left from the old days. Catulus, Bibulus, Ahenobarbus, and now dear Athenodorus Cordylion. How many more days do I have? If Caesar ends in ruling the world, I trust not many. The march ended in a vast camp on the outskirts of Utica, always the capital of the Roman province. Another Carthage had been built adjacent to the site of the home of Hannibal, Hamilcar and Hasdrubal, but Scipio Aemilianus had razed that home so thoroughly that the new Carthage never rivaled Utica, possessed of an equally magnificent harbor. A terrible wrench to part from the Ten Thousand, who mourned losing their beloved Commander; never organized into legions, the fifteen cohorts and extra noncombatants Cato had brought would be broken up and inserted into existing legions to plump them out. Still, that incredible march endowed every last participant in it with a luminousness akin to godhead in the eyes of their fellow Roman soldiers. The only one Cato took with him and Sextus Pompey was Lucius Gratidius, who, if Cato had his way, would train civilians. On his last evening before he entered the governor's palace in Utica and re-entered a world he hadn't known for well over five months, Cato sat to write to Socrates, the dioiketes of Arsino.

I had the forethought, my dear Socrates, to find a few men whose natural double step measured exactly five feet, and I then deputed them to pace out our entire journey from Arsino to Utica. Averaging their tallies resulted in a figure of 1,403 miles. Given that we dallied for three days at Philaenorum, a day at Charax, and four days outside Leptis Major a total of one nundinum we actually walked for 116 days. If you remember, we left Arsino three days before the Nones of January. We have arrived in Utica on the Nones of May. I had thought until I sat to work all this out on my abacus that we traveled at the rate of ten miles per day, but it turns out we covered twelve miles per day. All save sixty-seven of my men survived the trip, though we also lost a Psylli woman to a scorpion bite. This is just to tell you that we arrived and are safe, but also to tell you that were it not for you and Nasamones of the Psylli, our expedition would have foundered. We had naught but kindness and succor from those we encountered along the way, but the services you and Nasamones rendered us exceed all bounds. One day when our beloved Republic is restored, I hope to see you and Nasamones in Rome as my guests. I will do you public honor in the Senaculum.

The letter took a year to reach Socrates, a year during which much happened. Socrates read it through a wall of tears, then sat, the sheet of Fannian paper fallen to his lap, and shook his head. "Oh, Marcus Cato, would that you were a Xenophon!" he cried. "Four months upon an uncharted course, and all you can regale me with are facts and figures. What a Roman you are! A Greek would have been making copious notes as foundation for his book; you merely kept a few men pacing and counting. The thanks are greatly appreciated and the letter will be treasured as a relic because you found the time to write it, but oh, what I would give for a narrative of the march of your Ten Thousand!"

3

Roman Africa Province wasn't unduly large, just extremely rich. After Gaius Marius had defeated King Jugurtha of Numidia sixty years earlier it had been augmented by some Numidian lands, but Rome preferred client-kings to governors, so King Hiempsal was allowed to retain most of his country. He had reigned for over forty years, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Juba. Africa Province itself owned one asset which made it necessary for Rome to govern it: the Bagradas River, a large stream of many and strong tributaries that permitted the cultivation of wheat on a grand scale. At the time that Cato and his Ten Thousand arrived there, its grain crop had become as important as Sicily's, and the owners of its huge grain farms were members of the Senate or the Eighteen, who were the most powerful knight-businessmen. The province also possessed another quality obligating Rome to govern it directly: it occupied a northward bulge in the African coast right below Sicily and the instep of the Italian foot, therefore it was a perfect jumping-off point for an invasion of Sicily and Italy. In olden days, Carthage had done just that several times. After Caesar crossed the Rubicon and gained largely peaceful control of Italy, the anti-Caesarean Senate fled their homeland in the train of Pompey the Great, appointed their commander-in-chief. Unwilling to devastate the Italian countryside in yet another civil war, Pompey had resolved to fight Caesar abroad, and chose Greece/Macedonia as his theater. However, it was equally important to own the grain-producing provinces, particularly Sicily and Africa. Thus before it fled, the Republican Senate had dispatched Cato to hold Sicily, while Publius Attius Varus, governor of Africa Province, held that place in the name of the Republican Senate and People of Rome. Caesar sent his brilliant ex-tribune of the plebs, Gaius Scribonius Curio, to wrest both Sicily and Africa off the Republicans; he had to feed not only Rome, but also most of Italy, long incapable of feeding themselves. Sicily fell to Curio very quickly, for Cato was not a general of troops, simply a brave soldier. When he escaped to Africa, Curio and his army followed. But Attius Varus was not about to be cowed either by a couch general like Cato or a fledgling general like Curio. First he made Africa intolerable for Cato, who departed to Pompey in Macedonia, and then, aided by King Juba, Attius Varus led the overconfident Curio into an ambush. Curio and his army died. So it fell out that Caesar controlled one wheat province, Sicily, while the Republicans controlled the other, Africa. Which gave Caesar ample grain in good years but insufficient in lean years and there had been a succession of lean years due to a series of droughts from one end of Our Sea to the other. Complicated by the presence of Republican fleets in the Tuscan Sea, ready to pounce on Caesar's grain convoys; a situation bound to grow worse now that Republican resistance in the East was no more and Gnaeus Pompey had relocated his navy to the grain sea-lanes. Having gathered in Africa Province after Pharsalus, the Republicans were well aware that Caesar had to come after them. While ever they could field an army, Caesar's mastery of the world remained debatable. Because he was Caesar, they expected him sooner rather than later; when Cato had started out from Cyrenaica, the general consensus had been June, as this date would give Caesar time to deal with King Pharnaces in Anatolia first. So when the Ten Thousand finished its march, Cato was amazed to find the Republican army at slothful ease, and no sign of Caesar.

* * *

Had the late Gaius Marius laid eyes on the governor's palace in Utica in this present year, he would have found it very little changed from the place he had occupied six decades ago. Its walls were plastered and painted dull red inside; apart from a largish audience chamber it was a warren of smallish rooms, though there were two nice suites in an annex for visiting grain plutocrats or front bench senators off on a sight-seeing trip to the East. Now it seethed with so many Republican Great Names that it threatened to burst at the seams, and its stuffy interior thrummed with the sounds of all these Republican Great Names at outs and at odds with each other. A young and bashful tribune of the soldiers led Cato to the governor's office, where Publius Attius Varus sat at his walnut desk surrounded by paper-shuffling underlings. "I hear you've survived a remarkable journey, Cato," Varus said, not getting up to shake hands because he detested Cato. A nod, and the minions rose to file out of the room. "I could ill afford not to survive!" Cato shouted, back in shouting mode at mere sight of this churl "We need soldiers." "Yes, true." A martial man of good but not quite good enough family, Varus counted himself a client of Pompey the Great's, but more than duty to his patron had pushed him on to the Republican side; he was a passionate Caesar-hater, and proud of it. Now he coughed, looked disdainful. "I'm very much afraid, Cato, that I can offer you no accommodation. Anyone who hasn't been at least a tribune of the plebs is dossing down in a corridor ex-praetors like you rate a cupboard." "I don't expect you to house me, Publius Varus. One of my men is searching for a small house at this very moment." Recollections of Cato's standard of accommodation caused Varus to shudder; in Thessalonica, a three-roomed mud-brick hovel with three servants one for himself, one for Statyllus, and one for Athenodorus Cordylion. "Good. Wine?" he asked. "Not for me!" Cato barked. "I have taken a vow not to drink a drop until Caesar is dead." "A noble sacrifice," said Varus. The awkward visitor sat mum, his hair and beard a mess because he had not paused to bathe before reporting in. Oh, what did one say to such a man? "I hear that all you've eaten for the past four months is meat, Cato." "We managed to eat bread a part of the time." "Indeed?" "I have just said so." "I also hear that there were scorpions and gigantic spiders." "Yes." "Did many die from their bites?" "No." "Are all of your men fully recovered from their wounds?" "Yes." "And ah did you get caught in any sandstorms?" "No." "It must have been a nightmare when you ran out of water." "I did not run out of water." "Were you attacked by savages?" "No." "Did you manage to transport the men's armaments?" "Yes." "You must have missed the cut and thrust of politics." "There are no politics in civil wars." . "You missed noble company, then." "No." Attius Varus gave up. "Well, Cato, it's good to see you, and I trust you'll find suitable housing. Now that you're here and our troop tally is complete, I shall call a council for the second hour of daylight tomorrow. We have yet," he continued as he escorted Cato out, "to decide who is going to be commander-in-chief." What Cato might have replied was not voiced, for Varus spotted Sextus Pompey leaning against the outer doorway deep in talk with the sentries, and squawked. "Sextus Pompeius! Cato didn't say you were here too!" "That doesn't surprise me, Varus. Nevertheless, I am here." "You walked from Cyrenaica?" "Under the aegis of Marcus Cato, a pleasant stroll." "Come in, come in! May I offer you some wine?" "You certainly may," said Sextus with a wink for Cato as he disappeared arm in arm with Varus. Lucius Gratidius was lurking in the small square just outside the palace gates, chewing a straw and ogling the women busy doing their washing in the fountain. As he still wore nothing save a bedraggled tunic, no one on guard duty had realized that this skinny hulk was the pilus prior centurion of Pompey the Great's First Legion. "Found you quite a comfortable place," he said, straightening as Cato walked out to stand blinking in the sun. "Nine rooms and a bath. With a scrubwoman, a cook and two manservants thrown in, the price is five hundred sesterces a month." To a Roman of Rome, a pittance, even were he as frugal as Cato. "An excellent bargain, Gratidius. Has Statyllus turned up yet?" "No, but he will," Gratidius said cheerfully, directing Cato down a mean street. "He just wanted to make sure that Athenodorus Cordylion is going to rest easy. Lonely for a philosopher, I daresay, to have his ashes buried so far from any other philosopher's. You were right not to let Statyllus carry them to Utica. Not enough wood for a decent pyre, too many bone bits, too much marrow left." "I hadn't quite looked at it that way," said Cato. The apartment was the ground floor of a seven-story building right on the harbor front, its windows looking out over a forest of masts, tangles of silver-grey jetties and wharves, and that ethereally blue sea. Five hundred sesterces a month were indeed a bargain, Cato decided when he discovered that the two male slaves were obedient fellows pleased to fill him a warm bath. And, when Statyllus turned up in time for the late afternoon meal, he couldn't help but give a little smile. Statyllus's escort was none other than Sextus Pompey, who declined to share their bread, oil, cheese and salad, but ensconced himself in a chair and proceeded to give Cato the gleanings of his few hours with Varus. "I thought you'd like to know that Marcus Favonius is safe," he started out. "He encountered Caesar at Amphipolis and asked for pardon. Caesar gave it to him gladly, it seems. Pharsalus must have done something to his mind, Cato, because he wept and told Caesar that all he wanted was to return to his estates in Italy and live a quiet, peaceful life." Oh, Favonius, Favonius! Well, I could see this coming. While I lingered with the wounded in Dyrrachium, you had to endure those interminable quarrels between Pompeius's couch generals, ably assisted by that barbarian Labienus. Your letters told me all, but it doesn't surprise me that I've had no letter from you since Pharsalus. How you would dread informing me that you've abandoned the Republican cause. May you enjoy that quiet peace, dearest Marcus Favonius. I do not blame you. No, I cannot blame you. "And," Sextus was rattling on, "my informant who shall be nameless told me that things are even worse in Utica than they were in Dyrrachium and Thessalonica. Even idiots like Lucius Caesar Junior and Marcus Octavius, who've never even been tribunes of the plebs, are saying that they deserve legatal status in our army. As for the really Big Names ugh! Labienus, Metellus Scipio, Afranius and Governor Varus all think they should occupy the command tent." "I had hoped that would be decided before I got here, Cato said, voice harsh, face expressionless. "No, it's to be decided tomorrow." "And what of your brother, Gnaeus?" "Off applying a rod to tata-in-law Libo's arse somewhere on the south shore of Sicily. I predict," Sextus added with a grin, "that we won't see him until the command argument is settled." "Sensible man" was Cato's comment. "And you, Sextus?" "Oh, I'll stick to my stepmother's tata like a burr to a fleece. Metellus Scipio may not be bright or talented, but I do think my father would say I should serve with him." "Yes, he would." The fine grey eyes lifted to look at Sextus sternly. "What of Caesar?" he asked. A frown appeared. "That's the great mystery, Cato. As far as anyone knows, he's still in Egypt, though apparently not in Alexandria. There are all kinds of rumors, but the truth is that no one has heard a peep from Caesar since a letter written from Alexandria in November reached Rome a month later." "I don't believe it," Cato said, mouth tight. "The man is a prolific correspondent, and now, above all other times in his life, he needs to be at the center of things. Caesar, silent? Caesar, not in touch? He must be dead. Oh, what a twist of fortune! To have Caesar die of some plague or peasant's spear in a backwater like Egypt! I feel cheated." "Definitely not dead, is what rumor says. In fact, rumor says that he's cruising down the river Nilus on a golden barge feet deep in flowers, with the Queen of Egypt by his side, enough harps to drown ten elephants trumpeting, dancing girls in skimpy veils, and baths full of ass's milk." "Are you poking fun at me, Sextus Pompeius?" "I, poke fun at you, Marcus Cato? Never!" "Then it's a trick. But it makes sense of the inertia here in Utica. That autocratic piece of excrement, Varus, was not about to tell me anything, so I thank you for all this news. No, Caesar's silence has to be a trick." His lip curled. "What of the eminent consular and advocate, Marcus Tullius Cicero?" "Stuck in Brundisium on the horns of his latest dilemma. He was welcomed back to Italy by Vatinius, but then Marcus Antonius returned with the bulk of Caesar's army, and ordered Cicero to leave. Cicero produced Dolabella's letter, and Antonius apologized. But you know the poor old mouse too timid to venture any farther into Italy than Brundisium. His wife refuses to have a thing to do with him." Sextus giggled. "She's ugly enough to do duty as a fountain spout." A glare from Cato sobered him. "And Rome?" Cato asked. Sextus whistled. "Cato, it's a circus! The government is limping along on ten tribunes of the plebs because no one has managed to hold elections for the aediles, praetors or consuls. Dolabella got himself adopted into the Plebs and is now a tribune of the plebs. His debts are enormous, so he's trying to push a general cancellation of debts through the Plebeian Assembly. Every time he tries, that prime pair of Caesareans Pollio and Trebellius veto him, so he's copied Publius Clodius and organized street gangs to terrorize high and low alike," Sextus said, face animated. "As Caesar the Dictator is absent in Egypt, the head of state is his Master of the Horse, Antonius. Who is behaving shockingly wine, women, avarice, malice and corruption." "Pah!" Cato spat, eyes blazing. "Marcus Antonius is a rabid boar, a vulture oh, this is wonderful news!" he cried, grinning savagely. "Caesar has finally overreached himself, to put a drunken brute like Antonius in control. Master of the Horse! Arse of the horse, more like!" "You're underestimating Marcus Antonius," Sextus said, very seriously. "Cato, he's up to something. Caesar's veterans are camped around Capua, but they're restless and muttering about marching on Rome to get their 'rights' whatever 'rights' might be. My stepmother who sends you love, by the way says it's Antonius working on the legions for his own ends." "His own ends? Not Caesar's ends?" "Cornelia Metella says Antonius has developed high ambitions, means to step into Caesar's shoes." "How is she?" "Well." Sextus's face puckered, was disciplined. "She built a beautiful marble tomb in the grounds of her Alban Hills villa after Caesar sent her my father's ashes. It seems he met our freedman Philip, who cremated the body on the beach at Pelusium. Caesar himself had the head cremated. The ashes came with a soft and graceful letter Cornelia Metella's words promising that she will be allowed to keep all her property and money. So she has it to show Antonius if and when he calls to tell her that everything is confiscate." "I am at once astonished and deeply perturbed, Sextus," Cato said. "What is Caesar about? I need to know!"