The Secret of the Kingdom

Book II

Rome

If I could but describe what it feels like to arrive in Rome, at fifteen years of age, when one has known since childhood that all one’s blood ties are united with those sacred hills and valleys. For me, it felt as if the very ground shook beneath my feet as it welcomed its son, as if every furrowed stone in the streets had repeated eight hundred years of history for my ears. Even the muddy Tiber was so sacred to me that I felt faint at the sight of it.

I was perhaps exhausted by the excitement and lack of sleep on our long journey, but it all felt to me as if I were delightfully intoxicated, but more sweedy than with wine. This was the city of my forefathers and my city too, which ruled over the whole of the civilized world as far distant as Parthia and Germany.

Barbus sniffed the air eagerly as we made our way to the house of my father’s aunt, Manilia Laelius.

“For more than forty years I have missed the smell of Rome,” he said. “It’s a smell one never forgets and one notices it most in the town of Subura, just at this time of the evening when the smell of cooking and hot sausages blends with the natural smells of the narrow streets. It’s a mixture of garlic, cooking oil, spices, sweat and incense from the temples, but most of all a kind of basic smell which one can only call the smell of Rome, for I have never met it anywhere else. But in forty years the mixture seems to have changed, or perhaps my nose has grown old. Only with an effort can I regain the unforgettable smell of my childhood and youth.”

We arrived at the city on foot, for vehicles are forbidden in Rome in the daytime. Otherwise, communication would become impossible because of the overcrowding. For my sake, and perhaps also for his own, my father chose a roundabout route across the forum to Palatine, so that we had Palatine hill on our left and the Capitoline in front of us. Then we took the old Etruscan road to get up to Palatine, alongside the great circus. My head swung from side to side as my father patiently enumerated the temples and buildings, and Barbus gaped in wonder at the vast new apartments on the forum which had not been there in his dau. My father was sweating and breathing heavily as he walked. I thought compassionately that he was an old man although he was not yet fifty.

But my father did not stop to draw breath until we came to the round temple of Vesta. Through the opening in its roof rose the thin spiral of smoke from the sacred fire of Rome, and my father promised that the next day, if I wished, I could go with Barbus to look at the cave where the she-wolf had suckled Romulus and Remus and which the god Augustus had preserved as a spectacle for the whole world. The sacred tree of the wolf-brothers still grew in front of the cave.

“For me,” said my father, “the smell of Rome is an unforgettable scent of roses and salves, of clean linen and scrubbed stone floors, a smell which cannot be found elsewhere in the world, for the smell and soil of Rome itself has its own contribution to make. But the very thought of this smell makes me so melancholy that I can hardly bear to walk through these memorable streets once again. Let us not stop then, so that I shall not be too moved and lose the self-control which I have practiced for over fifteen years.”

But Barbus objected pitifully.

“Experience of a lifetime has taught me,” he said, “that a few gulps of wine are enough for my mind and for the whole of my being to take in smells and noises more clearly. Nothing has ever tasted so good in my mouth as the small spiced sausages one can get sizzling hot in Rome. Let us at least stop long enough to taste some.”

My father was forced to laugh. We stopped at the market and went into a small inn which was so old that its floor lay well below street level. Both Barbus and I eagerly sniffed the air.

“Blessed be Hercules!” cried Barbus in delight. “A bit of the old days is left of Rome after all. I remember this place, even if in my memory it was considerably larger and more spacious than it is now. Take a deep breath, Minutus, you who are younger than. I. Perhaps you can smell the smell of fish and mud, of reeds and manure, of sweaty bodies and the incense shops of the circus.”

He rinsed his mouth, spat out an offering on to the floor, and then stuffed his mouth with sausage, chewing and smacking his lips, his head to one side. Finally he said, “Something old and forgotten is in fact returning to my mind. But perhaps my mouth has also grown too old, for I can no longer feel the same sensual bliss as before with sausage in my mouth and a goblet of wine in my hand.”

The tears rose in his old eyes and he sighed.

“I am indeed like a ghost from the past,” he said, “now that the centenary is to be celebrated. I don’t know a single person here, neither a relation nor a protector. A new generation has replaced mine and it knows nothing of the past, so the spiced sausage has lost its flavor and the wine is diluted. I had hoped to come across an old comrade-inarms among the Emperor’s Praetors, or at least in the Fire Brigade of Rome, but now I wonder whether we’d even recognize each other. Woe to the conquered. I am like Priam in the ruins of Troy.”

The innkeeper hurried up, his face shining with grease, and asked what the matter was. He assured us that in his house one could find horsemen from the circus, officials of the State archives, actors, and architects who were putting Rome’s sights in order for the centenary festivities. One could even make acquaintance with nice little she-wolves beneath his roof. But Barbus was inconsolable and replied gloomily that he could not consider a she-wolf, for even that would certainly not feel the same as before.

Afterwards we walked up the hill of Aventine and my father said with a sigh that we should not have turned off into the inn after all, for the garlic sausage had given him a stomachache which not even the wine could allay. He was feeling pressure in his chest and was filled with evil forebodings, which grew worse at the sight of a crow flying past on our left.

In among the new and old apartment blocks, we wandered past several ancient temples which looked sunk into the ground beside the large buildings. On the other side of the hill, my father at last found the Manilianus family property. Compared with our house in Antioch, it was quite a small and neglected building which had at some time had an additional story built on to it to provide more space. But it was surrounded by a wall and a wild garden. When my father saw my contemptuous expression, he said sternly that the plot and the garden alone bore witness to the age and nobility of the house.

The bearers had long since arrived from the Capua gate with our luggage and Aunt Laelia was expecting us. First she let my father pay the bearers and then she came down the steps and along the garden path between the laurel bushes. She was a tall thin woman and had carefully rouged her lined cheeks and darkened her eyes. She was also wanting a ring on her finger and a copper chain around her neck. Her hands trembled as she came to meet us, her cries of joy carefully controlled.

She made a mistake at first, for my father in his humble way had stood in the background to pay the bearers himself, and she stopped in front of Barbus, bowing a little and covering her head as if in prayer.

“Ah, Marcus, what a joyful occasion,” she cried. “You are much changed since your youth. But your stance is now better and your figure more powerful.”

My father burst out laughing.

“Oh, Aunt Laelia,” he cried. “You are as shortsighted as ever. I am Marcus. This good honest old veteran is our companion Barbus, one of my clients.”

Aunt Laelia was annoyed at her own mistake. She went up to my father, peered at him with glittering eyes and fumbled over his shoulders and stomach with shaking hands..

“It is not so strange,” she remarked, “that I no longer recognize you. Your face has swollen, your stomach sags and I can hardly believe my own eyes, for you used to be quite good-looking.”

My father was not offended by her words. On the contrary.

“Thank you for your words, Aunt Laelia,” he said. “A weight has fallen from my mind, for I have had nothing but trouble from my appearance before. As you didn’t recognize me, then hardly anyone else will either. But you haven’t changed a bit. You’re as slim as before and your features are just as noble. The years have not changed you in the slightest. Embrace my son Minutus too, then, and be as good and considerate to him as you were to me in the lighthearted days of my youth.”

Aunt Laelia embraced me with delight, kissed me on the forehead and eyes with her thin mouth and felt my cheeks.

“But Minutus,” she cried, “you already have the beginnings of a beard and are not at all a child to be hugged.”

She went on, holding my head between her hands and looked carefully at my face.

“You look more like a Greek than a Roman,” she said. “But those green eyes and fair hair of yours are certainly very unusual. If you were a girl, I should say you were beautiful, but with those looks you will certainly make a good marriage. Your mother of course was a Greek, if I remember rightly.”

Not until she had stammered and chattered away for some time, as if she herself did not really know what she was saying, did I realize that she was in a state of utter terror. At the entrance we were greeted by a bald, toothless slave, and at his side stood a lame and one-eyed woman. They both knelt in front of my father and called out a greeting which Aunt Laelia had obviously taught them. My father looked embarrassed, patted Aunt Laelia on the shoulder and asked her to go in before us as she was the hostess. The little room was full of smoke which made us all start coughing, for Aunt Laelia had had a fire lighted on the household altar in our honor. Through the smoke I could just make out our family gods in fired clay, and their yellowed wax masks seemed to move in the swirling smoke.

Nervously tripping, coughing and gesticulating, Aunt Laelia began verbosely to explain that according to the traditions of the Manilianus family, we ought really to sacrifice a pig. But as she had been uncertain of the day of our arrival, she had not acquired a pig and could now offer us only olives, cheese and vegetable soup. She herself had long since ceased eating meat. We looked at all the rooms in the house and I saw the cobwebs in the corners, the wretched couches and some other poor furniture, and I suddenly realized that our noble and much respected Aunt Laelia lived in the depths of poverty. All that remained of Manilius the astronomer’s library were a few rat-chewed scrolls, and Aunt Laelia was forced to admit that she had even sold his portrait bust to the public library below Palatine. Finally she broke down and wept bitterly.

“Just blame me, Marcus,” she said. “I’m a bad housekeeper because I have seen better days in my youth. I shouldn’t have been able to keep this household going if you hadn’t sent money from Antioch. I don’t know where the money has gone, but at least it hasn’t gone on luxuries, wine and perfumed ointments. I still hope that my destiny may change any day now. This has been foretold. So you mustn’t be angry with me or ask me for a careful rendering of accounts of the money you sent me.”

But my father assured her that he had not come to Rome as an auditor. On the contrary, he deeply regretted he had not sent more money for the maintenance and repair of the house. But now everything would be changed, just as had been foretold to Aunt Laelia. My father bade Barbus unpack and spread the rich Eastern cloths on the floor. He gave Aunt Laelia a silk robe and a silk cloth, hung a necklace of jewels around her neck and asked her to try on a pair of soft red leather shoes. He also gave her a handsome wig, so that she wept even louder.

“Oh, Marcus,” she cried, “are you really so wealthy? You haven’t acquired all these expensive things in some dishonest way, have you? I thought perhaps you had fallen victim to the vices of the East, as Romans so easily do if they stay there too long. So I was uneasy when I saw your swollen face, but it was probably the tears which dimmed my sight. When I look at you with greater equanimity I shall get used to your face, which perhaps doesn’t look quite so unpleasant as I first thought.”

In fact Aunt Laelia feared and believed that my father had only come to take over the house and send her away to a life of poverty in the country somewhere. This belief was so deep-rooted that she kept repeating that a woman such as she could not possibly like it anywhere else but in Rome. Gradually she became braver and reminded us that she was after all the widow of a senator and was still a welcome visitor in many of the old houses in Rome, although her husband, Gnaius Laelius, had died so long ago as in the time of Emperor Tiberius.

I asked her to tell me about Senator Gnaius Laelius, but Aunt Laelia listened to my request with her head on one side.

“Marcus,” she said, “how is it possible that your son speaks Latin with such a dreadful Syrian accent? We must put that right or he’ll sound very foolish in Rome.”

My father said in his untroubled way that he himself had spoken so much Greek and Aramaic that his own pronunciation was almost certainly strange.

“Perhaps so,” said Aunt Laelia pungently, “for you are old and everyone knows you’ve picked up foreign accents on military or other duties abroad. But you must appoint a good tutor in rhetoric or an actor to improve Minutus’ pronunciation. He must go to the theater and listen to the public readings by authors. Emperor Claudius is particular about the purity of the language, even if he does let his freedmen speak Greek on matters of State, and his wife does other things which my modesty forbids me to mention.”

Then she turned to me.

“My poor husband, Senator Gnaius,” she explained, “was neither stupider nor simpler than Claudius. Yes, Claudius in his time even betrothed his son, who was a minor, to the daughter of the prefect Sejanus, and himself married his adoptive sister, Aelia. The boy was as scatterbrained as his father and later choked to death on a pear. I mean that my departed husband Laelius in the same way strove for the favors of Sejanus and thought he was serving the State in this way. You,

Marcus, weren’t you in some way mixed up in Sejanus’ intrigues, since you vanished so suddenly from Rome before the conspiracy was revealed? No one heard from you for years. In fact you were struck from the rolls of knighthood by dear Emperor Gaius simply because no one knew anything about you. I know nothing either, he said jokingly, and drew a line through your name. Or that’s what I heard, although perhaps whoever told me wanted to spare my feelings and not reveal everything he knew.”

My father answered stiffly that he would be going to the State archives the next day to have the reason for his name being struck off the rolls investigated. Aunt Laelia did not seem all that delighted to hear this. On the contrary, she asked whether it would not be safer to desist from digging into what was now old and rotten. When Emperor Claudius was drunk, he was irritable and capricious, even if he had put right many of Emperor Gaius’ political mistakes.

“But I realize that for Minutus’ sake, we must do what we can to restore the family honor,” she admitted. “The quickest way would be to give Minutus the man-toga and ensure that he comes before the eyes of Aelia Messalina. The young Empress likes young men who have recently been given the man-toga and invites them into her rooms to question them a deux on their descent and their hopes for the future. If I weren’t so proud, I would beg an audience with the bitch for Minutus’ sake. But I’m very much afraid she would not receive me. She knows only too well that I was the best friend of Emperor Gaius’ mother in her youth. In fact I was one of the few Roman women who helped Agrippina and young Julia give the remains of their poor brother a reasonably respectable burial after the girls had returned from their exile. Poor Gaius was murdered in such a brutal way, and then the Jews financed Claudius so that he could be Emperor. Agrippina managed to find a rich husband but Julia was banished from Rome again because Messalina thought she hung around her Uncle Claudius too much. Many men have been banished because of those two lively girls. I remember a certain Tigellinus, who may have been uneducated but who had the finest figure of all the young men in Rome. He didn’t mind about his exile much, but started a fishery business and is now supposed to be breeding racehorses. Then there was a Spanish philosopher, Seneca, who had published many books and had a certain relationship with Julia although he had tuberculosis. He has been pining away in exile in Corsica for several years. Messalina considered it unsuitable that a niece of Claudius’ should be unchaste, even if it was a secret. Anyhow, only Agrippina is alive now.”

When she stopped to draw breath, my father took the opportunity to say tactfully that it would be best if for the moment Aunt Laelia did not attempt to do anything to help me. My father wanted to see to the matter himself without interference from women. He had had enough of female interference, he said in bitter tones, so that it had choked him ever since the days of his youth.

Aunt Laelia was about to reply, but gave me a look and decided to keep quiet. At last we could start eating the olives, the cheese and the vegetable soup. My father saw to it that we did not finish the food but left some of it, even of the-small lump of cheese, for otherwise obviously neither of the household’s aged slaves would get anything to eat. I did not realize this myself, for at home in Antioch I had always received the best bits and there was always more than enough left over for the rest of the household and the poor who always gathered around my father.

The following day, my father appointed an architect to arrange for the repairs to the family property and a couple of gardeners to put the unkempt garden to rights. A hundred-year-old sycamore tree grew there, planted by a Manilius who had later been murdered in the open street by Marius’ men. A couple of ancient trees also grew near the house and my father was careful to see that they had not suffered any damage. The little sunken house he also left as outwardly unchanged as possible.

“You’ll be seeing a great deal of marble and other luxuries in Rome,” he explained to me, “but when you grow up you will realize that what I am doing now is the greatest luxury of all. Not even the richest upstart can acquire such ancient trees around his house, and the building’s old-fashioned appearance is worth more than all the columns and decorations.”

Fie turned back to his past in his thoughts and his face clouded.

“Once in Damascus,” he went on, “I was going to build myself a simple house and plant trees all around it, to live a peaceful life there with your mother, Myrina. But after her death, I sank into such complete despair that nothing meant anything to me for many years. Perhaps I would have killed myself if my duty to you had not forced me to continue living. And once a fisherman on the shores of Galilee promised me something which still makes me curious, although I remember it only as a dream.”

My father would not tell me more about this promise, but just repeated that he would have to be content with these ancient trees, for he himself had not been granted the joy of planting any and watching their growth.

While the building workers and the architect were about the house and my father was in the city from morning to night arranging his affairs, Barbus and I walked insatiably around Rome, looking at the people and the sights. Emperor Claudius was having all the old temples and memorials repaired for the centenary festivities and the priests and wise men were collecting all the myths and tales which belonged to them and adapting them to the demands of the present. The Imperial buildings on Palatine, the temple on the Capitoline, and the baths and theaters in Rome did not captivate me in themselves, for I had grown up in Antioch where there were just as magnificent and even larger public buildings. In fact Rome, with its crooked alleys and steep hillsides, was a cramped city to one who was used to the straight streets of spacious Antioch.

There was one building, however, which entranced me with its vast-ness and its associations. That was the enormous mausoleum of the god Augustus. It was circular in shape, for the most sacred temples in Rome were circular in memory of the days when Rome’s first inhabitants lived in round huts. The simple grandeur of the mausoleum seemed to me worthy of a god and the greatest ruler of all time. I never tired of reading the memorial inscription which listed Augustus’ greatest feats. Barbus was not so enthusiastic about it. He said that during his time as a legionary he had become cynical about all memorial inscriptions, for what was left out of them is usually more important than what is put in them. In that way a defeat can become a victory and political mistakes wise statesmanship. He assured me that between the lines of the memorial inscription on Augustus’ tomb he could read the destruction of whole legions, the sinking of hundreds of warships and the unmentionable deaths of civil war.

He was, of course, born at the time when Augustus had already established peace and order in the State and had strengthened the power of Rome, but his father had told him less of Augustus, who was considered petty and mean, and more of Marcus Antonius, who sometimes stood at the speaker’s platform in the forum so drunk that, inflamed by his own words, he was forced intermittently to vomit into a bucket beside him. That was at the time when they still used to appeal to the people. Augustus had won the respect of the Senate and the pea-ple of Rome during his all too long reign, hut life in Rome had, at least according to Barbus’ father, become considerably duller than before. No one had really loved the cautious Augustus, but the dashing Antonius was liked for his faults and his gifted lightheartedness.

But I was already familiar with Barbus’ stories, which my father would perhaps have considered unsuitable for my ears had he known about them. The mausoleum of Augustus delighted me with its wonderfully simple richness, and over and over again we walked right across Rome to look at it. But naturally I was also tempted to Mars field for the noble youth of Rome, where the sons of senators and knights were already busy practicing for the equestrian games at the centenary festivities. Enviously I watched them grouping, separating at signals from a horn and then regrouping again. I knew about all this and knew that I could control a horse just as well, if not better, than they.

Among the spectators to the equestrian games there were always several anxious mothers, for the noble youths were of all ages between seven and fifteen. The boys naturally pretended not to recognize their mothers, but snarled angrily if one of the smallest fell from his horse and the mother, frightened and with flapping mantle, rushed up to save him from the horse’s hooves. Naturally the smallest had quiet and well-exercised horses which soon stopped to protect whoever had fallen from the saddle. They were certainly not wild warhorses these Romans were riding. Ours in Antioch were much wilder.

Among the spectators, I once saw Valeria Messalina with her brilliant following, and I looked at her curiously. Of course I did not go near her, but from a distance she did not seem as beautiful as I had been told. Her seven-year-old son, whom Emperor Claudius had named Britannicus in honor of his victories in Britain, was a thin pale boy who was obviously afraid of the horse he was riding. He should really have been riding in the lead in these games because of his descent, but this was impossible because his face swelled and his eyes ran as soon as he mounted a horse. After every practice his face had turned scarlet with rash and he could scarcely see ahead of him because of his swollen eyes.

Pleading that the boy was too young, Claudius named Lucius Domitius, son of his niece Domitia Agrippinas, as leader. Lucius was not yet ten but he was quite different from the timid Britannicus, strongly built for his age and a fearless rider. After the practice, he often remained behind alone and did daredevil feats to win the applause of the crowd. He had inherited the reddish hair of the Domitius family, so he liked to take off his helmet during practice to show the people this sign of his ancient and fearless family. But the people praised him more because he was the nephew of Emperor Claudius than because he was a Domitius, for then he had the blood of both Julia, the daughter of Julius Caesar, and Marcus Antonius in his veins. Even Barbus was spurred on to shout in his coarse voice both benign and indecent gibes at him, making the people howl with laughter.

His mother, Agrippina, was for her part said not to dare come and watch the riding practices as the other mothers did, for she was afraid of Valeria Messalina’s envy. Warned by the fate of her sister, she avoided appearing in public as much as possible. But Lucius Domitius did not need his mother’s protection. He won the admiration of the crowd unaided with his boyish conduct. He controlled his body well, moved beautifully and his eyes were bold. The bigger boys did not seem to envy him, but subjected themselves quite willingly to his command during the exercises.

I leaned against the worn polished fence and watched the riding longingly. But my free existence soon came to an end. My father found a dismal tutor of rhetoric who sarcastically corrected every single word I spoke and apparently deliberately made me read aloud from nothing but dull books on self-control, humility and manly deeds. My father seemed to have an infallible gift for appointing tutors who drove me out of my mind.

While the house was being repaired, Barbus and I had a room on the upper floor which was impregnated with the smell of incense and had magical symbols on the walls. I did not take much notice of them, for I thought they had been there since the time of Manilius the astronomer. But I began to sleep badly because of them and have dreams, so that I woke to the sound of my own screams, or Barbus had to wake me up as I whimpered in a nightmare. My tutor also soon tired of the noise and the sound of hammers, and began to take me to the lecture rooms at the baths.

I found his thin limbs and round yellow stomach repugnant, and even more so when, in the middle of his sarcasms, he began to stroke my arms and talk about how in Antioch I must have made acquaintance with Greek love. He wanted me to move into his room with him on the top story of a wretched house in Subura while our house was being repaired. One had to climb a ladder to get there and he would then be able to instruct me undisturbed and familiarize me with a life of wisdom.

Barbus noticed his intentions and gave him a serious warning. When he did not heed it, Barbus finally gave him a beating. This frightened him so much, he no longer even dared go to my father for his salary. On our part, we dared not tell my father the real reason why he had vanished from our sight. My father presumed that I, by being so stubborn, had displeased an eminent scholar. We quarreled and I said, “Let me have a horse instead, so that I can get to know some other boys in Rome and have the company of others like myself and learn their customs.”

“A horse was your downfall in Antioch,” remarked my father. “Emperor Claudius has proclaimed a sensible new edict in which an old or otherwise decrepit senator or knight in the procession can lead his horse by the bridle without mounting. One has to carry out, in name only, the military service the office demands.”

“But at least give me enough money,” I said quickly, “so that I can make friends among actors, musicians and circus people. If I mix with them, I can get to know the effeminate Roman boys who avoid military service.”

But my father did not like this either.,

“Aunt Laelia has already warned me and says that a youngster like you shouldn’t be without company of your own age for too long,” he admitted. “While seeing to my affairs, I have met a certain shipowner and grain dealer. Now, after the. famine, Emperor Claudius is havifig a new harbor built and will pay compensation for grain ships which founder. On the advice of Marcius the fisherman, I have bought shares in these ships, for one no longer runs such a risk, and some people have already made a fortune by just re-equipping old ships. But the habits of these newcomers are such that I have no desire for you to mix with them.”

I had a feeling that my father did not himself know what he wanted.

“Have you come to Rome to get rich?” I asked him.

My father was annoyed.

“You know perfectly well,” he said violently, “that I desire nothing more than to live a simple life in peace and quiet. But my freedmen have taught me that it is a crime against the State and the common good to save gold coins in bags in a chest. In addition I want to buy more land in Caere, where my real family lives. You must never forget that we are of the Manilianus family only by adoption.”

He looked at me with troubled eyes.

“You have a fold in your eyelid,” he said, “just as I have. It is a sign of our true origins. But when I searched in the State archives, I saw with my own eyes the rolls of knighthood from Emperor Gaius’ day, and there is no mark against my name, only a snakelike wavy line through it. Gaius’ hands shook badly because of his illness. There was no court judgment or action against me. Whether this was because of my absence or not, I don’t know. The Procurator Pontius Pilate himself fell from grace ten years ago, lost his office and was removed to Galilee. But Emperor Claudius has that secret record and it could obviously contain something to my disadvantage. I have met his freedman Felix, who is interested in the affairs of Judaea. He has promised to consult Narcissus, the Emperor’s private secretary, at a suitable moment. I should prefer to meet this influential man myself, but he is said to be so important that it costs ten thousand sesterces just to meet him. For the sake of my honor and certainly not from meanness, I should prefer not to bribe him directly.”

My father went on to tell me that he had listened carefully and memorized everything said about Emperor Claudius, the bad as well as the good. The return of our name to the rolls depended in the long run on the Emperor personally. With increasing age, Emperor Claudius had become so capricious that at a whim or an omen, he would reverse the firmest decisions. He might also fall asleep in the middle of a session of the Senate, or at a trial, and forget what was being dealt with. While waiting, my father had taken the opportunity of reading all the works Emperor Claudius had published, even his manual on the game of dice.

“Emperor Claudius is one of the few Romans who can still speak the Etruscans’ language and read their script,” explained my father. “If you want to please me, go to the public library in Palatine and ask to read the book he has written on the history of the Etruscans. It is several scrolls long and not a very dull book. It also explains the words in many of the priests’ sacrificial rituals which they have hitherto had to learn by heart. Then we’ll go to Caere and look at our property, which I have still not yet seen myself. You will be able to ride there.”

But my father’s advice depressed me even more and I felt more like biting my lips and weeping than anything else. When my father had gone, Barbus gave me a sly look.

“It’s odd how many middle-aged men forget what it’s like to be young,” he said. “I remember very well indeed how when I was your age I wept without cause and had bad dreams. I know perfectly well how you could retrieve your peace of mind and sound sleep, but because of your father I daren’t arrange any such thing for you.”

Aunt Laelia also began to look at me with troubled eyes, and then she asked me into her room, looking around carefully before speaking.

“If you swear not to tell your father,” she said, “I’ll tell you a secret.”

From politeness I promised I would not, although I was laughing inwardly, for I thought that Aunt Laelia would be unlikely to have any thrilling secrets. But in this I was wrong.

“In the room you sleep in,” she said, “a Jewish magician called Simon used to live as my guest. He himself says he is a Samaritan, but they’re Jews too, aren’t they? His incense and magical symbols have probably been disturbing your sleep. He came to Rome some years ago and soon won a reputation as a physician, fortuneteller and miracle worker. Senator Marcellus let him live in his house and erected a statue for him, for he believed that Simon had divine powers. His powers were. tested. He plunged a young slave into the sleep of the dead ‘and then wakened him again from the dead, although the boy had already turned cold and did not show the slightest sign of life. I saw this with my own eyes.”

“I’m sure you did,” I said. “But I’ve had enough of Jews in Antioch.”

“Quite,” said Aunt Laelia eagerly. “Let me go on. The other Jews, the ones who live on the other side of the river, and the ones who live here on Aventine, became bitterly envious of Simon the magician. He could make himself invisible and he could fly. So the Jews summoned another magician who was also called Simon. Both of them had to demonstrate their powers and Simon, that is my Simon, asked the spectators to look carefully at a little cloud and then he suddenly disappeared. When he showed himself again, he was flying out of the cloud above the forum, but then the other Jew called on his idol, Christ, so that Simon fell to the ground in midflight and broke his leg. He was angry about this and was carried out of the city to hide in the country while his leg healed, until the other Simon had left the city. Then Simon the magician returned with his daughter and I let him live here as he had no better patron. He stayed with me as long as I had money but then moved to a house by the Moon temple and he receives, clients there. He doesn’t fly anymore, and neither does he raise the dead, but his daughter earns her living as a moon priestess. Many noble people let her tell their fortunes, and Simon gets back vanished articles.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked suspiciously.

Aunt Laelia began to wring her hands.

“It’s been so sad since Simon the magician left,” she said, “but he won’t receive me any longer because I’ve no money and I’ve not dared go to his home because of your father. But I’m sure he would cure your bad dreams and calm your fears. Anyhow, with his daughter’s help he could tell your fortune and advise you on what you should eat and what doesn’t agree with you and which days are your lucky days and which are unlucky. He forbade me to eat peas, for instance, and ever since then I’ve felt quite ill as soon as I see peas, even if they’re only dried ones.”

My father had given me some gold pieces to console me and spur me on to read the history of the Etruscans. I thought Aunt Laelia was a silly old lady, spending her time on superstition and magic because she did not have much fun in her life. But I didn’t grudge her her pastime, and the Samaritan magician and his daughter seemed much more exciting than the dusty library where old men sit endlessly rustling among the dry scrolls. The time had also come for me to make acquaintance with the Moon temple, because of the promise I had made to the oracle in Daphne.

When I promised to go with Laelia to the magician, she was extremely pleased. She dressed herself in silks, painted and prinked her wrinkled face, put on the red wig my father had given her and also put the necklace of jewels around her thin neck. Barbus asked her, in the name of the gods, at least to cover her head, for otherwise people might well take her for the hostess of a brothel. Aunt Laelia was not angry, but just wagged her forefinger at Barbus and forbade him to come with us. But Barbus had promised solemnly never to let me out of his sight in Rome. Finally we agreed that he should come with us to the Moon temple but would wait outside.

The Moon temple on Aventine is so ancient that there is no myth about it as there is about the more recent Diana temple. King Servius Tullius in his day had it built in a circular shape from magnificent timber. Later a stone temple was built around the wooden building. The innermost part of the temple is so holy that it has no stone floor, but is just flattened earth. Apart from votive gifts, there are no other sacred objects except a huge egg of stone, the surface of which is worn black and smooth with oil and salve. When one enters the half-light of the temple, one can feel the shiver of holiness one experiences only in very old temples. This shiver I had felt before in the temple of Saturn, which is the most ancient and most terrifying and most holy of all the temples in Rome. It is the temple of Time, and the high priest, who is usually the Emperor himself, on a certain day every year still beats on a copper nail in the oaken pillar which stands in the middle of it.

In the Moon temple there is no sacred pillar, but just the egg of stone. Beside it, on a tripod, a deathly pale woman was sitting so still that at first I took her for a statue in the darkness. But Aunt Laelia spoke to her in a voice that mewed with humility, calling her Helena and buying holy oil from her to rub into the egg. As she poured out the oil in drops, she mumbled a magic formula which only women are allowed to learn. For men it is useless to make offerings to this egg. As she was making offerings, I looked at the votive gifts and noticed to my delight that there were several small round’ silver boxes amongst them. I was ashamed at the thought of what I had promised to offer to the Moon goddess, for I considered it best to take it to the temple in a closed box when the time was right.

Just then the pale woman turned to me, looked at me with her frightening black eyes, smiled and said, “Don’t be ashamed of your thoughts, oh handsome youth. The Moon Goddess is a more powerful goddess than you think. If you can win her favor, then you will possess a power incomparably greater than the raw strength of Mars or the barren wisdom of Minerva.”

She spoke Latin with an accent, so that it sounded as if she had spoken some ancient forgotten language. Her face became enlarged in my eyes, as if shining with a hidden moonlight, and when she smiled I saw that she was beautiful despite her pallor. Aunt Laelia spoke to her even more humbly, so that I suddenly thought she looked like a thin cat, insinuatingly stroking and weaving herself around the stone

“No, no, not a cat,” said the priestess, still smiling. “A lioness. Don’t you see? What have you got to do with lions, boy?”

Her words frightened me and for a very brief moment I really seemed to see a thin troubled lioness where Aunt Laelia had been standing. It looked at me as reproachfully as the old lion outside Antioch had done when I had jabbed its paw with my spear. But the vision vanished as I brushed my hand across my forehead.

“Is your father at home?” asked Aunt Laelia. “And do you think he would receive us?”

“My father Simon has fasted and journeyed in many countries to appear unexpectedly to people who respect his divine power,” said the priestess Helena. “But I know that at the moment he is awake and is expecting you both.”

She took us through the rear door of the temple and a few steps beyond it to a tall block which had a shop for holy souvenirs on the ground floor full of both cheap and expensive moons and stars of copper and quite small polished stone eggs. The priestess Helena at once looked quite ordinary, her thin face yellow and her white cloak soiled and smelling foully of stale incense. She was no longer young.

She took us through the shop into a dirty back room where a black-bearded, thick-nosed man was sitting on a mat on the floor. He raised his eyes toward us as if he were still in another world, but then rose stiffly to greet Aunt Laelia.

“I was speaking with an Ethiopian magician,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice. “But I felt it in me that you were on your way here. Why do you disturb me, Laelia Manilia? From your silks and jewels I see that you have already received all the good things I foretold. What more do you want?”

Aunt Laelia explained meekly that I slept in the room in which Simon the magician had lived for so long. I had bad dreams at night, ground my teeth and cried out in my sleep. Aunt Laelia wanted to know the reasons for this and if possible to receive a remedy for it.

“I was also in debt to you, dearest Simon, when you left my house in your bitterness,” said Aunt Laelia, and she asked me to give the magician three gold pieces.

Simon the magician did not take the money himself, but just nodded to his daughter-if the priestess Helena really was his daughter-and she took it indifferently. Three Roman aureii is after all three hundred sesterces or seventy-five silver coins, so I was annoyed at her superciliousness.

The magician sat down on his mat again and asked me to sit opposite him. The priestess Helena threw a few pinches of incense into the holder.

“I heard that you broke your leg when you were flying,” I said politely at last, as the magician said nothing and just stared at me.

“I had a fall on the other side of the sea in Samaria,” he began in a monotonous voice. But Aunt Laelia became impatient and started to fidget.

“Oh, Simon, won’t you command us as before?” she pleaded.

The magician held his forefinger up in the air. Aunt Laelia stiffened and began to stare at it. Without even glancing at her, — . Simon the magician said, “You can no longer turn your head, Laelia Manilia. And don’t disturb us, but go bathe in the spring. When you step into the water, you will be satisfied and become younger.”

Aunt Laelia did not go anywhere but just remained immobile where she was, staring stupidly ahead as she made gestures as if she were undressing. Simon the magician went on looking at me and returned to his story.

“I had a tower of stone,” he said. “The moon and all five of the planets served me and my power was divine. The Moon Goddess took on human form in Helena and became my daughter. With her help I could see into both the past and the future. But then came magicians from Galilee whose powers were greater than mine. They needed only to place their hands on a man’s head and he would begin to speak and the spirit came to him. I was still young then and wanted to study all kinds of powers. So I bade them lay their hands on me too and promised them a large sum of money if they would transfer their powers to me so that I could perform the same miracle as they did. But they were miserly with their powers and cursed me and forbade me to use the name of their god in my activities. Look in my eyes, boy. What is your name?”

“Minutus,” I said reluctantly, for his monotonous voice, more than his story, had made my head whirl. “Oughtn’t you to know that without asking me, if you’re such a great magician?” I added sarcastically.

“Minutus, Minutus,” he repeated. “The power in me tells me that you will receive another name before the moon waxes for the third time. But I did not believe the Galilean magicians. On the contrary, I cured the sick in the name of their God until they began to persecute me and had me prosecuted in Jerusalem because of a little gold Eros. A rich woman gave it to me of her own free will. Look in my eyes, Minutus. But they bewitched her with their powers so that she herself forgot she had given it to me. Instead she said that I had made myself invisible and stolen it from her. You know I can make myself invisible, don’t you? I count to three, Minutus. One, two, three. Now you cannot see me any longer.”

He really did fade away from view so that I seemed to be staring at a shimmering ball which was perhaps a moon. But I shook my head violently, shut my eyes and opened them again, and then he was sitting opposite me just as before.

“I can see you as before, Simon the magician,” I said distrustfully. “I don’t want to look into your eyes.”

He laughed in a friendly way, made a dismissive gesture with his hands and said, “You are a stubborn boy and I don’t want to force you, for that would bring nothing good. But look at Manilia Laelius.”

I looked at Aunt Laelia. She had raised her hands and was leaning back with a rapturous expression on her face. The wrinkles around her mouth and eyes had been smoothed out and her figure had become buoyant and youthful.

“Where are you at the moment, Manilia Laelius?” asked Simon the magician in a commanding voice.

In girlish tones, Aunt Laelia replied at once. “I’m bathing in your spring,” she said. “The wonderful water covers me completely so that I am quivering all over.”

“Just go on with your divine bath, Laelia,” said the magician, and then to me he added, “This kind of witchcraft means nothing and does no harm to anyone. I could bewitch you so that you were always stumbling and injuring your feet and hands. But why should I waste my powers on you? Let us anyhow tell your fortune, now you are here. Helena, you are asleep.”

“I am asleep, Simon,” replied the priestess, immediately submissive though her eyes were open.

“What do you see about the youth called Minutus?” asked the magician.

“His animal is the lion,” said the priestess. “But the lion is approaching me and I cannot come past it. Behind the lion is a man attacking him with mortal arrows, but I cannot see what he looks like. He is much too far away in the future. But I can see Minutus clearly in a large room in which the shelves are full of scrolls. A woman is handing him an opened scroll. She has blackened hands. Her father is not her father. Be careful of her, Minutus. And now I see Minutus riding on a black stallion. He is wearing a shining breastplate. I can hear the roar of a crowd. But the lion is rushing at me. I must run away. Simon, Simon, save me!”

She gave a cry and covered her face with her hands. Simon hurriedly ordered her to waken, gave me a penetrating look and then asked, “You’re not practicing witchcraft yourself, are you? With your lion protecting you so jealously? Don’t worry. You need have no more bad dreams if only you remember to call on your lion in the dream. Was what you have heard what you wished to hear?”

“The main thing I heard,” I admitted. “And that was a pleasure to me, whether it was the truth or not. But I shall certainly remember you and your daughter if I ever find myself mounted on a black stallion in a shouting crowd.”

Simon the magician now turned to Aunt Laelia and spoke her name.

“Now it’s time for you to rise from the spring,” he commantled. “Let your friend pinch your arm as a sign. It won’t hurt, only sting a little. Wake up now.”

Aunt Laelia woke slowly from her trance and felt her left arm with the same rapturous look as before. I looked at her curiously and on her thin arm there really was a large bruise. Aunt Laelia rubbed it and trembled all over with pleasure so that I had to turn my eyes away. The priestess Helena smiled at me with her lips appealingly half-open. But I did not want to look at her either. I was confused and felt prickly all over. So I said farewell to them, but I had to hold Aunt Laelia’s arm and lead her out of the magician’s room, she was in such a dazed state.

In the shop, the priestess picked up a small black stone egg and handed it to me.

“Take this as a present from me,” she said. “May it protect your dreams when the moon is full.”

I was seized with the greatest reluctance to take anything from her.

“I’ll buy it,” I said. “How much do you want?”

“Just a strand of your hair,” said the priestess Helena, stretching out her hand to pull a hair from my head. But Aunt Laelia intervened and whispered that it would be better if I gave the woman money.

I had no small coins so I handed her a gold piece, and perhaps she had earned it with her fortunetelling. She accepted the coin indiffere tly.

“You set a high price on your strands of hair,” she said scornfully. “But perhaps you are right. The goddess knows.”

I found Barbus in front of the temple, doing his best to hide the fact that he had this opportunity to take a drink or two of wine so that he staggered unsteadily along behind us. Aunt Laelia was in a gay mood and she stroked the bruise on her arm.

“Simon the magician was more gracious to me than he has been for a long time,” she explained, “I feel enlivened and refreshed in every way and haven’t a single ache in my body. But it was a good thing you didn’t give a strand of hair In his shameless daughter. With its help she could have visited your bed in n dream.”

She put her hand to her mouth in fright and glanced at me.

“You’re already a big boy,” she said. “Your father must have explained these things to you. I’m certain Simon the magician sometimes bewitches a man to sleep with his daughter. Then that man falls completely in their power, even though he in exchange has received success of another kind. I should have warned you beforehand, but I didn’t think about it as you are still a minor. I didn’t realize until she asked you for a strand of your hair.”

After the meeting with Simon the magician, my bad dreams did not occur again. When a nightmare tried to take possession of me, I remembered Simon the magician’s advice in the dream and called upon my lion. At once it came, lay down protectively beside me and was in every way so living and real that I could stroke its mane with my hand even if, when I woke up from my light sleep, I noticed I had been stroking a fold in my covers.

I was so pleased with the lion that once or twice I called on it just as I was falling asleep. Even out in the city, I could imagine the lion walking along behind me and protecting me.

A few days after the visit to Simon the magician, I remembered my father’s request and went to the library below Palatine. I asked the crusty old librarian for the history of the Etruscans by Emperor Claudius. He was contemptuous at first because of my youthful attire, but I was already tired of the superior attitude of the Romans, and I snapped at him that I was thinking of writing to the Emperor himself to complain about not being allowed to read his works at the library. So he hurriedly called on a blue-clad slave who took me to a room in which there was a large statue of Claudius, and showed me the right section.

I was left looking at the Emperor’s statue in amazement, for Claudius had had himself represented as Apollo, and the sculptor had in no way beautified his thin limbs and drunkard’s face, so the statue looked more absurd than imposing. At least the Emperor was not vain, allowing a statue of himself such as this to be erected in a public library.

At first I thought I was alone in the room and presumed that the Romans did not rank Claudius very high as an author since they left his scrolls collecting the dust in their slots. But then I noticed that over by a narrow reading-window a young woman was sitting with her back to me. I hunted for the Etruscan history for a while. I found the history of Carthage which Claudius had also written, but the slots in which the history of the Etruscans was evidently kept were empty. I looked again at the woman reading and noticed she had a whole heap of scrolls beside her.

I had allotted the whole day to this dreary task, for one may not read by lamplight in the library because of the danger of fire, and I did not want to leave without having accomplished my work. So I plucked up courage, for I was shy of speaking to strange women, went over to her and asked her whether she was reading the history of the Etruscans and whether she needed all the scrolls at once. My voice was sarcastic, although I knew perfectly well that many well-brought-up women are bookworms. But they certainly did not usually read history books, but more likely Ovid’s fantastic love stories and adventures.

The woman started violently, just as if she had only then noticed my arrival, and she looked up at me with her eyes glittering. She was young, and judging by her hair style, unmarried. Her face was not beautiful but rather irregular and coarse of feature. Her smooth skin was sunburned like a slave’s, her mouth large and her lips full.

“I’m learning the words of the holy rituals and I’m comparing them with each other in different books,” she snapped. “It’s not funny.”

Despite her bad temper, I had a feeling that she was as shy of me as I was of her. I noticed her hands were blackened with ink and that she was making notes with a leaky pen on a papyrus. One could see from her handwriting that she was used to writing but the poor materials blurred her script.

“I assure you I’m not laughing,” I hastened to say, smiling at her. “On the contrary, I am full of respect for your learned occupation. I don’t wish to disturb you in any way, but I’ve promised my father to read this book. Of course I shall not understand as much of it as you, but a promise is a promise.”

I had hoped she would ask me who my father was so that I could ask after her name. But she was not as inquisitive as that. She looked at me as one looks on a troublesome fly, then poked among the heap of scrolls at her feet and handed me the first part of the book.

“Here you are,” she said. “Take it and leave me in peace from your advances.”

I flushed so violently that my face burned. The girl was certainly mistaken if she thought I had trumped up an excuse to get to know her. I took the scroll, went over to the reading-window on the other side of the room and began to read with my back to her.

I read as quickly as possible without attempting to try to memorize the long list of names. Claudius evidently considered it necessary to enumerate from whom and how he had received every piece of information, what other people had written about it and what he himself considered to be the case. I did not think I had ever before read such a finicky and tedious book. But at the time when Timaius had ordered me to read the books he liked, I had learned to read swiftly and to memorize a few things that interested me. I used to cling stubbornly to these when Timaius later questioned me on the contents of the book. I thought I would read this book in the same way.

But the girl would not let me read in peace. She sat tittering to herself and sometimes swore aloud as she rustled the scrolls. In the end she tired of constantly sharpening her useless pen, broke it in half and stamped her foot in a rage.

“Are you blind and deaf, you horrible boy?” she cried. “Go and get me a proper pen at once. You must be very badly brought up if you can’t see I need one.”

My face burned again and I was annoyed, for the girl’s own conduct did not exactly point to a good upbringing. But I did not want to quarrel with her over the scrolls just as I had finished the first one. So I controlled myself and went to the librarian and asked for a spare quill. He muttered that according to the library rules, quills and paper for notes were free, but that no citizen was so poor that he had the nerve to take a pen without paying. Angrily I gave him a silver piece and he happily handed me a bundle of pens and a scroll of the worst paper. I returned to the Claudius room where the girl snatched the pens and paper out of my hand without even thanking me.

When I had finished the first book, I went back to her and asked her for the second.

“Can you really read so quickly?” she asked in surprise. “Do you remember anything of what you’ve read?”

“At least I can remember that the Etruscan priests had a deplorable habit of using poisonous snakes as throwing weapons,” I said. “I’m not surprised that you’re studying their customs and habits.”

I had a feeling she was already regretting her behavior, for in spite of my nasty remark she humbly handed me a quill and like a little girl, said, “Would you mind sharpening my quill for me? I don’t seem to be able to do it. They start leaking almost at once.”

“That’s because of the poor paper,” I explained.

I took her pen and knife, sharpened and carefully split the point for her.

“Don’t press so hard on the paper,” I said, “or you’ll get a blot at once. If you’re not too rough, it’s quite easy to write even on bad paper.”

She gave me a sudden smile, like lightning in dark stormy clouds.

Her strong features, wide mouth and slanting eyes looked suddenly lovely, such as I could never have believed before.

When I remained standing, staring at her, she grimaced, stuck her tongue out and snapped, “Take your book and go away and read, since you think it’s such fun.”

But she still kept disturbing me, coming over and asking me to sharpen her pen again, so that my fingers were soon as black as hers. The ink was so lumpy anyhow that she cursed her inkstand several times.

At midday she took out a bundle, opened it and began to eat greedily, tearing off long strips of bread and taking huge bites out of a country cheese.

When she noticed my look of disapproval, she began to make excuses.

“I know perfectly well you’re not allowed to eat in the library,” she said, “but I can’t help that. If I go out, I get pushed about and strange men follow me and say shameless things because I’m alone.”

She paused and then, with her eyes lowered, she added, “My slave is coming to fetch me in the evening when the library closes.”

But I soon realized that she did not even have a slave. Her meal was simple and she presumably had no money for pens and paper which was why she had commantled me so haughtily to fetch her a pen. I felt baffled, for I did not wish to offend her in any way. But I also felt hungry when I saw her eating.

I must have swallowed, for her voice suddenly softened.

“Poor boy,” she said. “You must be hungry too.”

She generously broke the bread in half and also handed me her round cheese so that we could bite from it in turn, and the meal ended before it had really had time to begin. When one is young everything tastes good. So I praised her bread.

“That was real country bread and the cheese was a fresh country cheese, too. You can’t get those in Rome every day.”

She was pleased with my praise.

“I live outside the walls,” she said. “If you know where Gaius’ circus is and the burial ground and the oracle, then it’s in that direction, behind Vatican.”

But she still would not tell me her name. We went on with our reading. She wrote and mumblingly repeated by heart several old texts which Claudius had written about in his book on the holy scripts of the Etruscans. I read one part after another and memorized everything about the wars and warships of the city of Caere. In the evening the room grew dark as the shadow of Palatine fell over the window. The sky had also clouded over,

“We mustn’t ruin our eyes,” I said finally. “Tomorrow is another day, but I’m already tired of this moldy old history. You, who are an educated woman, would be able to help me and note down briefly what is in the parts I haven’t read, or at least what the most important things in them are. My father has property near Caere, so he’ll probably question me on everything Emperor Claudius says about the history of Caere. Please don’t be offended at the suggestion, but I feel like having some hot sausage to eat. I know a place and would like to invite you, if you will help me.”

She frowned, rose and looked at me so closely that I could feel her warm breath on my face.

“Don’t you really know who I am?” she asked suspiciously, and then went on at once: “No, you don’t know me, and you meant no harm. You’re just a boy.”

“I’m just about to receive the man-toga,” I said, offended. “The matter has been held up because of a number of family circumstances. You’re not much older than I am. And I’m taller than you.”

“My dear child,” she teased, “I’m already twenty and an old woman compared to you. I’m certainly stronger than you. Aren’t you afraid of going out with a strange woman?”

But she swiftly stuffed the scrolls willy-nilly back into their slots, collected her belongings, smoothed her clothes and eagerly prepared to leave, as if she were afraid I might regret my offer. To my surprise, she stopped in front of the statue of Emperor Claudius and spat on it before I could stop her. When she noticed my horror, she laughed loudly and spat again. She was indeed badly brought up.

Without hesitating, she thrust her arm into mine and dragged me with her so that I could feel how strong she was. She had not boasted for nothing. She haughtily said good-bye to the librarian who came to see that we had not hidden any scrolls beneath our clothes. He did not examine us very thoroughly however, as suspicious librarians sometimes do.

The girl made no further mention of her slave. There were many people out on the forum and she wanted to walk up and down there for a while between the temple and the Curia, all the time holding my arm as if she wanted to show off her prize and possession to people. One or two people called something to her as if they knew her, and the girl laughed and replied without shyness. A senator and a couple of knights and their following met us. They turned their eyes away when they caught sight of the girl. She took no notice.

“As you see, I’m not considered a virtuous girl.” She laughed. “But I’m not entirely depraved. You needn’t be afraid.”

Finally she agreed to come with me into an inn by the cattle market where I boldly ordered hot sausage, pork in a clay bowl, and wine. The girl ate as greedily as a wolf, and wiped her greasy fingers on a corner of her mantle. She did not mix her wine with water, so neither did I. But my head began to whirl, for I was not used to drinking undiluted wine. The girl hummed as she ate, patted my cheek, abused the landlord in simple market language and suddenly struck my hand completely numb with her fist when I accidentally happened to brush against her knee. I could not help but begin to think that she was a little odd in the head.

The inn was suddenly full of people. Musicians, actors and jesters made their way in too and entertained the guests, collecting copper coins in a rattling jar. One of the ragged singers stopped in front of us, plucked at his cittern and sang to the girl:

“Come, oh daughter Of the hang-jowled wolf, She who was born On the cold stone step; Father drank And mother whored, And a cousin took Her virginity.”

But he got no further. The girl rose and slapped him across the face. “Better to have wolf blood,” she screamed, “than piss in your veins like you!

The landlord hastened up to drive away the singer and he poured us out some wine with his own hands.

“Clarissima,” he pleaded. “Your presence is an honor, but the boy is a minor. I beg you to drink up and go. Otherwise I’ll have the magistrates here.”

It was late already and I did not know what to think of the girl’s unrestrained conduct. Perhaps she was in fact a depraved little she-wolf whom the landlord only jokingly addressed as honorable. To my relief she agreed to leave without any fuss, but when we were outside, she seized my arm again firmly.

“Come with me as far as to the bridge over the Tiber,” she begged.

As we came down to the riverbank we saw uneasy clouds appearing low in the sky, reddened by the flares from the city. The rough autumn waters sighed invisibly below us and we smelled the mud and decaying reeds. The girl led me to the bridge which went over to the island of Tiber. In the temple of Aesculapius on the island, heartless masters left their mortally sick and dying slaves for whom they had no further use, and from the other side of the island a bridge went on over to the I4th department of the city, the Jewish Transtiberium. The bridge was not a very pleasant place at night. In the gaps between the clouds there glittered a few autumn stars, the river shone darkly, and the moaning of the sick and dying was carried toward us from the island on the wind like a dirge from the underworld.

The girl leaned over the bridge and spat into the Tiber as a sign of her contempt.

“You spit too,” she said, “or are you afraid of the River God?”

I had no desire to dishonor the Tiber, but after she had teased me for a while I spat too, childish as I was. Simultaneously a shooting star flew over the Tiber in a flashing arc. I think I shall remember until my dying day the swirl of the waters, the uneasy shimmering red clouds, the wine fumes in my head and the crystal star curving across the glossy black Tiber.

The girl pressed herself against me so that I could feel how supple her body was, although she was a head shorter than I.

‹cYour shooting star went from east to west,” she whispered. “I am superstitious. You have lines of happiness on your hands, I’ve noticed. Perhaps you will bring happiness to me too.”

“At least tell me now what your name is,” I said irritably. “I’ve told you mine and I’ve told you about my father. I’m bound to get into trouble at home for staying out so late.”

“Yes, yes, you are but a child,” sighed the girl, taking off her shoes. “I’ll go now, and barefoot too. My shoes have already rubbed my feet so much that I had to lean on you as we walked. Now I no longer need your support. You go home so that you don’t get into trouble because of me.”

But I insisted stubbornly that she should tell me her name. Finally she sighed deeply.

“Do you promise to kiss me on the mouth with your innocent boy’s lips,” she said, “and not be frightened when I tell you my name?”

I said I was neither able nor allowed to touch any girl until I had fulfilled the promise given to the oracle in Daphne, so she was curious.

“We might at least try,” she suggested. “My name is Claudia Plautia Urgulanilla.”

“Claudia,” I repeated, “Are you a Claudian, then?”

She was surprised that I had not recognized her name.

“Do you seriously mean to say that you know nothing about me?” she said. “I can well believe you were born in Syria. My father separated from my mother and I was born five months after the divorce. My father did not take me in his arms but sent me naked to my mother’s threshold. It would have been better if he’d thrown me in the sewers. I have a legal right to bear the name of Claudia, but no honest man either can or will marry me because my father, by his action, illegally declared me to have been born out of wedlock. Do you see why I read his books to find out how mad he really is and why I spit on his image?”

“By all the gods, both known and unknown,” I cried in astonishment, “are you trying to tell me that you are the daughter of Emperor Claudius, you silly girl?”

“Everyone in Rome knows it,” she snapped. “That’s why the senators and knights daren’t greet me in the streets. That’s why I’m hidden away in the country behind Vatican. But fulfill your promise now, I’ve told you my name, although of course I oughtn’t to have done so.”

She dropped her shoes and put her arms around me, although I resisted her. But then both she and the whole affair began to annoy me. I pressed her hard against me and kissed her warm lips in the darkness. And nothing happened to me, although I had broken my promise. Or perhaps the goddess was not offended as I did not even begin to tremble when I kissed the girl. Or perhaps it was because of the promise that I could not tremble when I kissed a girl. I do not know.

Claudia let her hands rest on my shoulders and breathed warmly on my face.

“Promise me, Minutus,” she said, “that you’ll come and see me when you’ve received the man-toga.”

I mumbled that even then I should have to obey my father. But Claudia persisted.

“Now you’ve kissed me,” she said decisively, “you’re bound to me in some way.”

She bent down and hunted for her shoes in the darkness. Then she patted my cold cheek and hurried away. I called after her that I felt in no way bound to her as she had forced her kisses on me, but Claudia had vanished into the night. The wind carried the groans of the sick from the island, the water swirled ominously and I hurried home as quickly as I could. Barbus had searched for me at the library and the forum in vain and was furious with me, but he had not dared tell Aunt Laelia that I had disappeared. Fortunately my father was late as usual.

The following day I asked Aunt Laelia in a roundabout way about Claudia. I told her I had met Claudia Plautia at the library and given her a quill. Aunt Laelia was appalled.

“Don’t you ever get mixed up with that shameless girl,” she said. “Better to run away if you see her again. Emperor Claudius has many times regretted not drowning her, but at the time he didn’t yet dare do such things. The girl’s mother was a big fierce woman. Claudius was afraid of the consequences if he had got rid of the girl. To annoy Claudius, Emperor Gaius would always call Claudia his cousin and I think he dragged her into his immoral life too. Poor Gaius even slept with his own sisters because he thought he was a god. Claudia isn’t received in any of the respectable houses. Anyhow, her mother was killed by a famous gladiator and he wasn’t even prosecuted because he could prove that he was only defending his virtue. Urgulanilla became more and more violent in her love affairs as the years went by.”

I soon forgot Claudia, for my father took me with him to Caere and we stayed there for a month in the winter while he saw to his property. The huge burial mounds of former Etruscan kings and nobles in their countless numbers on each side of the sacred road made a deep impression on me. When the Romans had captured Caere hundreds of years before, they had plundered the old tombs, but there were some large, more recent mounds untouched beside the road. I began to feel respect for my own ancestors. Despite everything my father had told me, I had not imagined that the Etruscans had been such a great people. From Emperor Claudius’ book one could not imagine the melancholy exaltation of these royal tombs. One has to see them with one’s own eyes.

The inhabitants of this now poverty-stricken city avoided going to the burial ground at night and maintained that it was haunted. But in the daytime, travelers walked here to look at the ancient mounds and relief carvings in the plundered tombs. My father took the opportunity to make a collection of old bronze miniatures and holy black clay bowls which the local people found when plowing and digging wells. Collectors had of course already taken away the best bronzes in the time of Augustus, when it was fashionable to collect Etruscan objects. Most of the statuettes had been broken off from the lids of the urns.

I was not interested in farming. Bored, I accompanied my father while he inspected the fields, the olive groves and the vineyards. The poets usually praise the simple life of the country, but I myself felt no more longing to settle there than they had. Around Caere one could hunt only foxes, hares and birds, and I was not very enthusiastic about this kind of hunting which required nothing but traps, snares and lime twigs, and no courage.

From my father’s attitude to his slaves and freedmen who looked after his property, I realized that farming is an expensive pleasure for a city man and that it costs more than it brings in. Only huge estates worked with slave labor can possibly pay, but my father was reluctant to farm in this way.

“I’d rather my subordinates lived happily and had healthy children,” he said. “I’m glad they can be a little better off at my expense. It’s good to know one has a place one can retreat to if one’s fortunes go awry.”

I noticed that the farmers were never satisfied and always complaining. Either it rained too much or it was too dry or the insects destroyed the vines or the olive harvest was so good the price of oil fell. And my father’s underlings did not seem to respect him, but behaved unscrupulously when they saw how good-natured he was. They complained endlessly about their poor houses, their wretched tools and their oxens’ illnesses.

Occasionally my father grew angry and spoke harshly, in contrast to his usual attitude, but then they hurriedly produced a meal for him and offered him chilled white wine. The children tied a wreath around his head and played ring games around him until he was appeased and made new concessions to his tenants and freedmen. In fact, in Caere my father drank so much wine that he hardly saw a sober day there.

In the city of Caere we met several potbellied priests. and merchants who had folds in their eyelids and whose family trees went back a thousand years. They helped my father draw up his own family tree, right back to the year when Lycurgus destroyed the fleet and harbor of Caere. My father also bought a burial place on the holy road in Caere.

Finally a message came from Rome that everything was in order. The Censor had confirmed my father’s request to have his rank of knighthood returned to him. The matter would be put before Emperor

Claudius any day now, so we had to return to Rome. There we waited at home for several days, since we could be summoned to Palatine at any time. Claudius’ secretary, Narcissus, had promised to pick a favorable moment for the case.

The winter was severe; the stone floors in Rome were icy cold and every day people died in the tenements from fumes from ill-cared-for braziers. In the daytime the sun shone and predicted spring, but even the senators unblushingly had braziers put under their ivory stools during the meetings at the Curia. Aunt Laelia complained that the old virtues of Rome had gone. In the time of Augustus, many an old senator would have preferred pneumonia or a lifetime of rheumatism to such unmanly coddling of his body.

Aunt Laelia naturally wanted to see the feast of Lupercalia and the procession, too. She assured us that the Emperor himself was the high priest and we should scarcely be summoned to Palatine on that day. Early on the morning of Idus in February, I accompanied her to as near the ancient fig tree as it was possible to get. Inside the cave the Luper-calias sacrificed a goat in honor of Faunus Lupercus. The priest drew a sign on the foreheads of all the Lupercalias with his bloodstained knife and they all wiped it off again at once with a piece of holy linen which had been steeped in milk. Then they all burst into the ritual communal laughter. The sacred laughter which came from the cave was so loud and terrifying that the crowd stiffened with piety and several distracted women ran ahead down the route the guards were keeping open for the procession with their holy bundles of sticks. In the cave the priests cut the hide of the goat into long strips with their sacrificial knives and then danced their sacred dance down the route. They were all completely naked, laughing the sacred laughter and, with the strips of goatskin, whipping the women who had pushed forward onto the route so that they received bloodstains on their clothes. Dancing in this way, they circled the whole of Palatine Hill.

Aunt Laelia was pleased and said that she had not heard the ritual laughter sound so solemn for many years. A woman who is touched by the Lupercalias’ bloodstained strips of hide becomes pregnant within a year, she explained. It was an infallible remedy for infertility. She regretted that noble women did not want children, for it had been for the most part the wives of ordinary citizens who had come to be scourged by the Lupercalias, and she had not seen a single senator’s wife along the whole route. Some people in the tight-packed crowd of spectators said that they had seen Emperor Claudius in person leaping about and howling as he urged the Lupercalias on to the scourging, but we did not see him. When the procession had circled the hill and turned back to the cave to sacrifice a pregnant bitch, we went home and ate the customary meal of boiled goat meat and wheaten bread baked in the shape of human sexual organs. Aunt Laelia drank wine and expressed pleasure that the wonderful Roman spring was at last on its way after the miserable winter. Just as my father was urging her to take her midday siesta before she began to talk about things which were not suitable for my ears, a messenger slave from Narcissus, the Emperor’s secretary, came running breathlessly in to say that we must go to Palatine at once without delay. We went on foot with only Barbus accompanying us, which surprised the slave considerably. Fortunately we were both suitably clad for the occasion because of the feast.

The slave, who was dressed in white and gold, told us that all the signs were favorable and that the festival rituals had been faultlessly carried out, so Emperor Claudius was in a very good mood. He was still entertaining the Lupercalias in his own rooms, dressed in the robes of the high priest. At the entrance to the palace we were thoroughly searched and Barbus had to stay outside because he was wearing his sword. My father was surprised that even I was searched, although I was a minor.

Narcissus, the Emperor’s freedman and private secretary, was a Greek, emaciated from worries and his prodigious burden of work. He received us with unexpected friendliness, although my father had not sent him a gift. Quite openly he said that at a time which foreboded many changes, it was to the advantage of the State to honor reliable men who knew and remembered whom they had to thank for their position. To confirm this he rustled in the papers concerning my father and extracted a crumpled note which he handed to him.

“It would be best if you yourself took care of this,” he said. “It’s a secret note from Tiberius’ day on your character and habits. They are forgotten matters which are of no importance today.”

My father read the paper, flushed, and hastily thrust it into his clothes. Narcissus went on as if nothing had happened.

“The Emperor is proud of his knowledge and wisdom,” he said, “but he is inclined to fasten on to details and sometimes persists with some old matter for a whole day just to demonstrate his good memory, while forgetting the main point.”

“Who in his youth has not occasionally kept vigil in the groves of Baiae?” my father said in some confusion. “As far as I am concerned all that is in the past. In any case, I don’t know how to thank you. I have been told how strickly Emperor Claudius, and especially Valeria Messalina, watch over the moral conduct of the knights.”

“Perhaps one day I’ll let it be known how you can thank me,” said Narcissus with a bleak smile. “I am said to be a greedy man, but you must not make the mistake of offering me money, Marcus Manilianus. I am the Emperor’s freedman. Thus my property is the Emperor’s property and everything I do as far as I am able is for the best for the Emperor and for the State. But we must hurry, for the most favorable moment is soon after a sacrificial meal when the Emperor is preparing for his siesta.”

He took us to the south reception room, the walls of which were decorated with paintings of the Trojan war. With his own hand, he let down the sun-blind so that the sun should not glare too strongly into the room. Emperor Claudius arrived, supported on each side by his personal slaves who, at a sign from Narcissus, sat him down on the Imperial throne. He was humming the Faunus hymn to himself and he peered at us shortsightedly. When he was seated, he looked more dignified than when standing, although his head kept nodding in different directions. He was easily recognizable from his statues and the replicas of his head on the coins, though now he had spilled wine and sauce on himself during the meal. He was obviously cheered by the wine for the moment and was ready and eager to tackle matters of State before he began to feel sleepy.

Narcissus introduced us and said swiftly, “The matter is quite clear. Here is the family tree, the certificate of income and the Censor’s recommendation. Marcus Mezentius Manilianus has been a prominent member of the city council in Antioch and is deserving of full compensation for the injustice that has been done to him. He himself is not an ambitious man but his son can grow up and serve the State.”

While Emperor Claudius mumbled about his youthful memories of the astronomer Manilius, he unrolled the papers and read here and there in them. My mother’s ancestry captivated him and he ruminated for a while.

“Myrina,” he said. “That was the Queen of the Amazons who fought against the Gorgons, but then it was a Trachian, Mopsus, whom Lycurgus had exiled, who killed her in the end. Myrina was really her divine name. Her earthly name was Batieia. It would have been more suitable if your wife had used this earthly name. Narcissus, make a note of that and put it right in the papers.”

My father reverently thanked the Emperor for this correction and promised to see to it at once that the statue the city of Myrina had erected in memory of my mother would bear the name of Batieia. The Emperor received the impression that my mother had been a famous woman in Myrina as the city had raised a statue of her.

“Your Greek ancestors are very noble, boy,” he said, looking at me benignly with his bloodshot eyes. “Our culture is of Greece but the art of building cities is of Rome. You are pure and handsome like one of my gold coins on which I have had a Latin text imprinted on one side and a Greek on the other. How can such a beautiful and upright boy be called Minutus? That is exaggerated modesty.”

My father hurriedly explained that he had postponed my day of manhood until my name could be placed in the rolls of knights in the temple of Castor and Pollux at the same time. It would be the greatest honor if Emperor Claudius would himself give me a suitable second name.

“I have property in Caere,” he said. “My family goes back to the days when Syracuse destroyed the sea power of Caere. But those are things you know more about than I, Clarissimus.”

“I thought your face was known to me in some way,” cried Claudius in delight. ‘Tour face and eyes I recognize from the murals in the old Etruscan tombs I studied in my youth, although even then they were being destroyed by damp and neglect. If you are called Mezentius, then your son should be named Lausus. Do you know who Lausus was, boy?”

I told him Lausus was a son of King Mezentius who fought together with Turnus against Aeneas.

“That’s what it says in your history of the Etruscans,” I said innocently. “Otherwise I shouldn’t have known it.”

“Have you really read my little book, despite your youth?” asked Claudius, and then he began to hiccough with emotion. Narcissus patted him gently on the back and ordered the slaves to fetch him more wine. Claudius invited us also to take wine, but warned me in a fatherly way not to drink wine undiluted until I was as old as he was. Narcissus took the opportunity to ask Claudius for his signature to confirm my father’s knighthood. He signed willingly although I think he had forgotten what the matter was about.

“Is it really your will that my son shall bear the name of Lausus?” asked my father. “If so, it is the greatest honor I can think of that Emperor Claudius himself wishes to stand as godfather to him,”

Claudius drank his wine, his head trembling.

“Narcissus,” he said firmly. “Write that down too. You, Mezentius, just send a message to me when the boy is to have his hair cut and I’ll come as your guest if important matters of State do not hinder me at the time.”

He rose decisively and nearly stumbled before the slaves had time to come forward and support him. With a loud belch, he remarked, “My many learned works of research have made me absentminded, and I remember old things better than new things. So it would be best to note down at once everything I have promised and forbidden. Now I had better take my siesta and must vomit properly. Otherwise I shall have stomachache from that tough goatmeat.”

When he had left the room, supported by his two slaves, Narcissus turned to my father.

“Let your boy receive the man-toga at the first suitable moment,” he advised, “and then let me know. It is possible that the Emperor will remember his promise to stand as godfather. At least I shall remind him about the name and his promise. Then he’ll pretend he has remembered, even if he has not.”

Aunt Laelia had to go to great trouble to find even a few nobles who could be considered related to the Manilianus family. One of the guests was an old former consul who kindly held my hand while I sacrificed the pig. But most of them were women, contemporaries of Aunt Laelia, who were largely tempted to the house in the hope of a free meal. They gabbled like a flock of geese when the barber cut my hair short and shaved the scanty down from my chin. It was an effort to keep calm while they dressed me in the toga and stroked my limbs and patted my cheeks. They could hardly contain their curiosity when, because of the promise I had made, I took the barber up to my room and had him also shave off all the body hairs which showed my manhood. These I put together with the down from my chin into a silver box, the lid of which was decorated with a moon and a lion. The barber chatted and joked while going about his business, but also told me that it was not at all unusual that noble youths receiving the man-toga offered the hair from their private parts to Venus to win her favor.

Emperor Claudius did not come to our family feast, but he had Narcissus send me the gold ring of knighthood and permission to have it written in the rolls that he personally had given me the name Lausus. Our guests went with my father and me to the temple of Castor and Pollux. My father paid the necessary dues into the archive, and then I had to put the gold ring on my thumb. My ceremonial toga with its narrow red border was ready. The ceremony was not particularly formal. From the archive we went to the meeting room of the Noble Order of Knights, where we paid for permission to choose our horses at the stables on Mars field.

When we returned home, my father gave me the complete outfit of a Roman knight, a wrought-silver shield, a silver-plated helmet with red plumes, a long sword and a spear. The old ladies urged me to put it all on, and naturally I could not resist the temptation. Barbus helped me fasten the soft leather tunic and soon I was marching around the floor in my short red boots, strutting like a turkey cock with my helmet on my head and a drawn sword in my hand.

It was already evening. Our house was ablaze with lights and outside people stood watching as well-wishers came and went. The spectators greeted with acclamation the arrival of a finely decorated sedan which was carried up to our entrance by two coal-black Slaves. Aunt Laelia, tripping over her garments, rushed up to meet this late arrival, and out of the sedan stepped a short plump woman whose silk gown revealed almost too clearly her voluptuous figure. Her face was hidden behind a purple veil, but she drew it to one side and allowed Aunt Laelia to kiss her on both cheeks. She had fine-drawn features and a beautifully painted face.

Aunt Laelia, her voice shrill with emotion, called out, “Minutus, my dear, this is the noble Tullia Valeria, who wants to wish you good fortune. She is a widow, but her late husband was a real Valerius.”

The woman, still startlingly beautiful although she had reached a mature age, stretched out her arms and swept me, armor and sword and all, to her bosom.

“Oh, Minutus Lausus,” she cried, “I heard that the Emperor himself has given you your second name and I am not surprised now I see your face. If my fortunes and your father’s whims had allowed it, you could be my own son. Your father and I were good friends in our time, but he must still be ashamed of his behavior toward me as he-didn’t come to see me as soon as he came to Rome.”

She was still clasping me tenderly in her arms so that I could feel her soft, breast and smell the stupefying scent of her perfumed salves as she looked around. When my father caught sight of her face he stiffened, turned deathly pale and made a movement as if he wished to turn and flee. The lovely Tullia took my hand and approached my father with a charming smile on her face.

“Don’t be afraid, Marcus,” she said. “On a day like this I forgive you everything. What is past is past, and don’t let us grieve over it. But I have filled many flasks with my tears because of you, you heartless man.”

She let me go, wound her arms around my father’s neck and kissed him tenderly on his lips. My father shook himself free, trembling from head to foot, and said reproachfully, “Tullia, Tullia, you should know better. I’d rather see a Gorgon head than your face here in my house tonight.”

But Tullia put her hand over his mouth and turned to Aunt Laelia.

“Marcus hasn’t changed at all,” she said. “Someone should take care of him. When I see how confused he is and hear him talk in that unreasonable way, I regret that I overcame my pride and came to him when he was ashamed to come to me.”

This beautiful silk-clad woman entranced me, however old she might be, and I felt a malicious pleasure in seeing my father so completely lose his self-control in her presence. Tullia now turned her attention to the other guests and greeted some of them in a friendly way and others superciliously. The old ladies had much to whisper about with their heads together, but she took no notice of their spiteful glances.

She would eat only a few sweetmeats and drink a little wine, but she asked me to sit beside her on the couch.

“It’s not unseemly,” she said, “although you are fully grown now. I could be your mother.”

With her soft hand she stroked the back of my neck, sighed and then looked in my eyes so that I felt a tingling all over my body. My father noticed and came up to us with his hands clenched.

“Leave my boy alone,” he said briskly. “You’ve already caused me enough trouble.”

Tullia shook her head sadly and sighed.

“If anyone has helped you, Marcus,” she said, “then it was I in your manhood days. Once I even traveled all the way to Alexandria after you, but don’t think I would do it again. It is only for your son’s sake that I have come to warn you. Valeria Messalina is offended that Claudius has given your son his name and sent him the ring of knighthood without consulting her. For that reason there are certain other persons who are curious about you and your son and want to favor all those with whom this shameless woman seeks a quarrel. It is a difficult choice that awaits you, Marcus.”

“I don’t want to be involved, even to know about such things,” cried my father in despair. “I can’t believe that after all these years you immediately want to involve me in one of your intrigues in which I can lose my good reputation just as I have managed to retrieve it. Shame on yon, Tullia.”

Hut Tullia teasingly laughed aloud and brushed her hand across my father’s.

“Now I see why I was so insane about you once, Marcus,” she said. “No other man has ever been able to pronounce my name so delightfully.”

And to tell the truth, when my father spoke her name there was a touch of melancholy in his voice. Of course I could not possibly see what such a fine noble woman could see in my father. Aunt Laelia came up to us, tittering cheerfully, and gave my father a playful slap on the cheek.

“You’re not sitting here squabbling like a pair of young lovers, are you?” she said warningly. “It’s high time you calmed down, my dear Tullia. You’ve already had four husbands and the last “one has hardly had time to grow cold in his grave.”

“Exactly, dear Laelia,” admitted Tullia. “It is time I calmed down. That is why I am so unutterably glad to have found Marcus again. His presence calms me wonderfully.”

She turned to me.

“But you, young Achilles,” she went on, “your new sword makes my mind uneasy. If only I were ten years younger, I should ask you to come with me to look at the moon. But old as I am, I cannot. Go then and amuse yourself. Your father and I have much to settle together.”

When she mentioned the moon, I was disturbed and went up to the upper floor to remove my armor. I felt my shorn hair and my smooth cheeks and was suddenly disappointed and sad, for I had been waiting for this day for so long and had dreamed about it and now nothing was as I had expected. But I had to fulfill my promise to the oracle in Daphne.

I went out the back way and in the kitchen acknowledged the good wishes of the sweating slaves. I told them to eat and drink as much as they could manage, for there would be no more guests arriving now. At the gate I dutifully straightened up the almost extinguished torches and thought sadly that this was perhaps the greatest and most solemn day of my life. Life is just like a torch, which at first burns clearly and then is extinguished in fumes and smoke.

A girl wrapped in a brown mantle stepped out from the dark shadows of the wall.

“Minutus, Minutus,” she whispered. “I want to wish you happiness and have brought you these cakes which I baked for you myself. I was going to leave them with the slaves, but fate was kind to me and let me meet you myself.”

With horror, I recognized Claudia, against whom Aunt Laelia had warned me. But at the same time I was flattered that this strange girl had found out the day of my majority in order to wish me happiness. Quite unexpectedly a great rush of joy went through me when I saw her thick black eyebrows, her wide mouth and sunburned skin. She was different from all the aging soured guests who had gathered in our house. Claudia was living and real and genuine. She was my friend.

Claudia shyly brushed her hand across my cheek and was not at all as arrogant and self-confident as when we had first met.

“Minutus,” she whispered. “You’ve probably heard evil things about me, but I am not as bad as people make out. In fact I want to think only good thoughts now I have met you. In that way you’ve brought me happiness.”

We began to walk side by side toward the Moon temple. Claudia adjusted my toga at the neck and together we ate one of her cakes by taking turns at biting into it, just as we had done with her cheese at the library. The cake was spiced with honey and caraway. Claudia said she had collected the honey and caraway herself and ground the wheat-flour with her own hands in an old hand mill.

As we walked she did not take my arm, but shyly avoided touching me. Filled with my manhood, I took her arm and steered her around the potholes in the street. She sighed happily. In strictest confidence, I told her about my promise and said that I was now on my way to the Moon temple with my votive gift in a silver box.

“Ugh, that temple has a bad reputation!” cried Claudia. “Immoral mysteries go on there behind barred doors at night. It was a good thing I was standing outside your house. If you’d gone there alone, you might have lost more than your gift.

“I don’t even bother to watch the State sacrifices any longer,” she went on. “The gods are just stone and wood. That lying old man in Palatine is reviving old ceremonies just to bind people more firmly with the old chains. I have my own sacred tree and a clear sacrificial well. If I’m sad I go to the oracle at the Vatican and look at the birds flying.”

“You talk like my father,” I said. “He did not even want to let a seer read in a liver for me. But powers and witchcraft exist. Even sensible people admit that. So I prefer to fulfill my promise rather than not.”

We had reached the temple, which stood sunk in the ground. Fortunately the door stood wide open and inside a few small lamps were burning, but there was no one in sight as I hung my silver box up among the other temple gifts. I should really have rung the bell to summon the priestess, but to be honest I was afraid of her and did not at that particular moment wish to see her pale white face. I hurriedly dipped the tips of my fingers into the holy oil and rubbed them on the stone egg. Claudia smiled in amusement and placed a cake on the priestess’ empty stool as a gift. Then we ran out of the temple like two naughty children.

Outside in front of the temple, we kissed each other. Claudia held my head between her hands.

“Has your father already betrothed you,” she asked jealously, “or have you only been shown some Roman girls to choose from? That’s usually part of the coming of age ceremonies.”

I had not given even a thought to why Aunt Laelia’s old friends had brought a couple of small girls with them. They had stared at me with their fingers in their mouths. I thought they had been allowed to come to taste the sweetmeats and cakes.

“No, no,” I replied in fright. “My father has by no means considered marrying me to anyone.”

“Oh, if only I could control myself and tell you clearly my thoughts,” said Claudia sadly. “Don’t bind yourself to anyone too s’oon, will you? That brings a great deal of unhappiness. There are enough marriage breakers in Rome already. You probably still think the difference in our ages very great since I am five years older than you are. But as the years go by and you do your military service, the difference will seem less. You have eaten a cake I have baked and kissed my lips of your own free will. That does not tie you in any way, but I take it as a sign that I am not entirely repugnant to you. So I can do no more than ask you to remember me sometimes and not tie yourself to anyone else without first telling me.”

I had not the slightest intention of marrying, so I thought her request reasonable. I kissed her again and was warmed by holding her in my arms.

“That I can promise you,” I said, “as long as you don’t always want to be with me wherever I am. In fact I’ve never liked giggling girls of my own age and I like you because you are more mature and because you read books. I can’t remember the poets describing marriage ceremonies in their love poems. On the contrary, they describe love as free and untrammeled. It has nothing to do with hearth and home but is about the scent of roses and moonlight.”

Claudia was upset and drew back a little.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said reproachfully. “Why shouldn’t I think about the scarlet veil, the saffron yellow mantle and the girdle with two knots. That is the innermost thought in every woman’s mind when she strokes a man’s cheeks and kisses his lips.”

Her protestations made me pull her roughly back into my arms, to kiss her reluctant lips and warm throat. But Claudia struggled free, gave me a sharp slap over the ear and burst into tears, which she then wiped away with the back of her hand.

“I thought you had other thoughts about me,” she sobbed. “This is all the thanks I get for controlling myself and believing only good of you. But you only want to fling me down on my back over there by the wall and press my knees apart to satisfy your lust. I’m not that sort of girl.”

Her tears made me weaken and cool down.

“You’re strong enough to defend yourself,” I said sullenly, “and I don’t even know if I could do what you say. I’ve never played about with slave-women and neither did my nurse seduce me. There’s no need for you to cry, for you’re certainly much more experienced in these matters than I am.”

Claudia was astonished at my words and forgot to cry as she stared at me in wonder.

“Are you telling me the truth?” she said. “I’ve always thought that boys behave like monkeys. The more noble they are, the more monkeylike their habits. But if you’re telling me the truth, then I have even more reason to control my trembling body. You would despise me if I gratified our desires. Our pleasure would be short-lived and soon forgotten.”

My cheek was stinging and the disappointment in my body made me snap at her, “You obviously know best.”

Without looking at her, I began to walk homeward. She hesitated for a moment and then slowly followed me and we said nothing to each other for a while. But in the end I had to burst out laughing. It was pleasant that she came with me so humbly.

She made the most of the opportunity and put her hand on my shoulder.

“Promise me one more thing, Minutus dear,” she begged. “Don’t go straight to a brothel or to make an offering to Venus, as most boys do as soon as they receive their togas. If you feel an irresistible desire for something like that, for I know men are ungovernable, then promise to tell me first, even if it hurts me.”

I promised her all this as she asked me so persuasively. All I was thinking of was what kind of horse I should get. At that time not even Cleopatra could have competed with a good horse in my mind. I laughed when I gave my word and told her she was a nice but rather peculiar girl. We parted smiling and good friends. I was in a good mood afterward. When I got home, my father was just getting into Tullia’s sedan to accompany her home, for she lived at Viminalis on the other side of the city, on the boundary between Altasemita and Esquilina. My father’s eyes were staring and glassy and he did not ask me where I had been, but just told me to go to bed in good time. I suspected that he had drunk a good deal of wine but it was not noticeable from his walk.

I slept soundly and long, but was very disappointed when my father was not at home in the morning. I had hoped we could go straight to the stables to choose a horse for me. The house was being cleaned after the feast and Aunt Laelia complained of a headache. I asked where my father had gone so early.

“Your father is old enough to know what he’s doing,” she replied angrily. “He had a great deal to discuss with his erstwhile friend. Perhaps he stayed the night at Tullia’s house. She has room for more men than him.”

Barbus and I whiled away the time by playing dice in the bushes in the garden while the cleaners set about the house indoors with their brooms and buckets. Spring was in the air. At last my father returned at midday, unshaven, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He had covered his face with a fold of his toga and there was a lawyer with him carrying scrolls of paper and writing materials. Barbus gave me a nudge as a sign that it would be wiser to keep quiet.

My father, in contrast to his usual behavior, kicked over the cleaners’ buckets and ordered the slaves to vanish from his sight with all speed. After hastily consulting the lawyer, he called me in. Aunt Laelia was weeping copiously and I hardly dared stammer out a question to my father about whether he now had time to come with me to choose a horse.

“You and your horse will drive me mad,” he exclaimed. His face was twisted with rage and when one looked at him, it was easy to realize that in his youth he had gone about for years in a state of mental confusion. But he soon regretted his rage.

“No, no, it’s all my own fault,” he said. “It’s my own weakness that has driven me into this state. A stroke of ill fortune has changed all my plans. Now I must go back to Antioch without a moment’s delay. So I have allotted to you the income from some of my estates in Caere and my properties here in the city. It will give you more than the annual income of a thousand sesterces required of a knight. Aunt Laelia will have to look after the house. It can be your home. I have also allotted an annuity to Aunt Laelia. And it’s nothing to cry about. My lawyer will be your guardian. He is of an old noble family. You can go and choose a horse together at once if you want to, but I must return to Antioch immediately.”

My father was so confused that he was about to rush out on to the street at once to set off on his journey, but the lawyer and Aunt Laelia restrained him. They arranged for his luggage and clothes and food, although he said impatiently that he could hire a wagon at the city gates and go to Puteoli and buy everything he wanted on the way. Suddenly chaos reigned in our house after the cheerful festivities of the previous day. We could not let him go away like an exile, the corner of his mantle hiding his face. So we all went with him, Aunt Laelia, the lawyer, Barbus and I. Last came the slaves carrying his hurriedly packed belongings.

When my father reached the Capua gate below Coelius, he let out a deep sigh of relief and began to bid us all farewell, saying that he could already see golden freedom looming ahead of him on the other side of the gate and that he should never have left Antioch. But at the gate, one of the city magistrates came up to us with his official stave in his hand and two powerful policemen behind him.

“Are you the Roman knight, Marcus Mezentius Manilianus?” he asked my father. “If you are, then there is a lady of high position who has important business with you.”

At first my father turned scarlet and then ashen gray in the face. He looked down at the ground, said that he had nothing to say to any lady, and then tried to leave through the city gates.

“If you try to go outside the walls,” the magistrate warned him, “I am ordered to bring you before the City Prefect and it is my duty to arrest you to prevent you from escaping.”

The lawyer hurried up* to my father, asking the magistrate to disperse the crowd that had already gathered, and also asking what my father was accused of.

“It is a simple and discreditable story,” explained the magistrate. “I should prefer to see those involved settle it between them. The noble senator’s widow Valeria Tullia insists that last night Manilianus, in the presence of witnesses, de jure promised her marriage and afterward de facto slept with her. When she for some reason or other doubted Manilianus’ honorable intentions, she had this Manilianus followed by her slave after he had run from her house without bidding her farewell. When the widow Tullia became convinced that he intended to flee, she turned to the Prefect. If Manilianus removes himself beyond the city wall, he will be charged with breach of promise, rape, and also for the theft of a valuable necklace belonging to widow Tullia, which is presumably more ignominious for a knight than a breach of promise.”

My father fumbled at his throat with stiff fingers, pulled out a gold necklace of different colored stones and then said in a broken voice, “Widow Tullia put this cursed necklace around my neck with her own hands. In my haste I forgot to return it to her. Matters of great importance force me to return to Antioch. Naturally I shall give the necklace back to her and stand whatever security you wish, but I must leave here immediately.”

The magistrate was ashamed on behalf of my father.

“Didn’t you in fact exchange necklaces with each other,” he asked, “to confirm your betrothal and marriage promise?”

“I was drunk and did not know what I was doing,” protested my father.

But the magistrate did not believe him.

“On the contrary,” he said, “you appealed verbosely to a number of examples according to which philosophers have been able to enter into a genuine and legal marriage simply by giving a promise in the presence of witnesses. This is what I have been told. Do I understand that in a drunken state, you have made fun of an honorable woman and induced her into bed with you? In which case what you have done is even worse. I am giving you an opportunity to come to some agreement, but if you go through that gate, I shall have you imprisoned and your case will be settled in court instead.”

At least the lawyer managed to persuade my father to hold his tongue and also promised to accompany him to Valeria Tullia’s house to talk the matter over. Exhausted and confused, my father broke down and wept.

“Leave me to my misery,” he pleaded. “I’d rather go to prison, give up my knighthood and pay the fines than have to face that false woman again. She must have poisoned me and mixed something shameful in my wine for me to have been so out of my mind. I remember almost nothing of what happened.”

Everything could be straightened out, the lawyer assured him, and promised to defend him at the trial. Then Aunt Laelia intervened, stamping her foot and weeping, burning red patches appearing on her cheeks.

“You must not sully the good name of Manilianus with another shameful case, Marcus!” she cried. “Be a man for once and stand by what you have done.”

Weeping, I supported Aunt Laelia’s demand and cried that such a case would also make me look foolish all over Rome and would ruin my future. I begged that we should all go to Tullia’s house at once. I promised that I would go down on my knees beside my father in front of this beautiful and noble lady and beg her forgiveness.

My father was unable to withstand us. Followed by the magistrate and the policemen, we went to Viminalis hill, the slaves in the rear carrying my father’s things because no one had thought to order them to turn around and go back home. Valeria Tullia’s house and garden were immensely large and magnificent. In the columned courtyard we were met by a giant doorkeeper dressed in green and silver. He greeted my father respectfully.

“Oh, my lord,” he cried. “You are welcome back to your house. My mistress is impatiently awaiting you.”

With a final glance of despair, my father weakly asked us to wait for him in the courtyard and then went on in alone.

A whole flock of slaves came hurrying out to offer us fruit and wine from silver vessels. Aunt Laelia looked cheerfully about.

“There are some men who don’t know what’s good for them,” she remarked. “I can’t think what Marcus can have to complain about in a house like this.”

Soon Tullia came running out to greet us, dressed in nothing but a transparent shift of silk, her hair neatly combed and her face painted.

“I’m so pleased,” she cried joyfully, “that Marcus has returned to me so soon and has brought his things with him too. Now he need never go away from here again, but we can live happily together for the rest of our days.”

She ordered a purse of soft red leather to be handed to the magistrate as compensation for his trouble, and then said ruefully, “Of course in my heart I did not doubt Marcus for a moment, but a lonely widow has to be careful, and in his younger days Marcus was quite fickle. I am delighted that he has now brought his lawyer with him so that we can draw up the marriage contract at once. I wouldn’t have imagined, dear Marcus, that your wits were ordered to that extent, so disordered were they in my bed last night.”

My father cleared his throat and swallowed, but not a word was forthcoming. Tullia took us into her large rooms and let us admire the mosaic floor, the murals and the beautifully proportioned panels. She let us look into her bedroom, but pretended to be shy, covering her face.

“No, no,” she cried. “Don’t go in there. Everything is in disorder after last night.”

My father at last managed to find his voice.

“You have won, Tullia,” he snapped, “and I submit to my fate. But at least send the magistrate away so that he need no longer witness my degradation.”

Handsomely dressed slaves hovered around us and did their best to serve and please us. Two small naked boys were running about the house playing at cupids. I was afraid that they would catch cold until I realized that the stone floor in this magnificent house was heated by hot pipes. The magistrate and my father’s lawyer consulted together for a while and decided that a promise of marriage given in the presence of witnesses was legally valid without a public marriage. The magistrate and his policemen left when he had been convinced that my father was prepared to sign a marriage contract without protest. The lawyer made the magistrate promise to keep silent about the whole affair, but even I with my scant sense realized that a person in his position could not possibly resist passing on such a delicious piece of scandal.

But was it in fact a scandal? Was it not flattering for my father that such a noble and obviously immensely rich woman would stop at nothing to marry him? Despite my father’s modest habits and outward humility, he must have possessed hidden qualities of which I knew nothing and which would certainly rouse the curiosity of the whole of Rome, both about him and also about me. In fact this marriage could be to my advantage in every way. At least it would force my father to stay in Rome for the time being so that I need not drift about in this city in which I still felt insecure.

But what could the beautiful pampered Tullia see in my father? For a moment I was seized with the suspicion that she led a frivolous life and was up to her ears in debt and so wanted my father’s money. But in fact my father was not especially rich by Rome’s standards, although his freedmen in Antioch and elsewhere in the East were wealthy. My suspicions were allayed when my father and Tullia, in complete agreement, decided to make the marriage contract so that even in the future they would each keep control of their own fortunes.

“But whenever you have the time or feel like it, dear Marcus,” suggested Tullia mildly, “I hope you will talk to my treasurer and go through my accounts and give me advice about my affairs. What does a simple widow understand about such things? I have heard it said that you have become a clever businessman, although no one would have suspected it of you in your youth.”

My father remarked in annoyance that now that law and order reigned in the country, thanks to Emperor Claudius and his freedmen, a sensibly placed fortune grew by itself,

“But my head is empty and I have not a single sensible thought left,” he said, scratching his chin. “I must go to the barber and the baths to rest and collect what is left of my wits.”

But Tullia led us straight past the marble statues and wells in the vast inner courtyard of the house, over to its far side where she showed us her own bathhouse with hot and cold pools, steam room and cooling room. A barber, a masseur and a bath-slave were all waiting there ready to serve us.

“You need never again pay a single denarius to the clothes-minders at the public baths, or expose yourself to the crush and smell of the people,” Tullia explained. “If you feel like reading, poetry or music after your bath, there is special room here for that purpose. Go now, Marcus and Minutus, and bathe, while I consult with my dear friend Laelia on how we shall arrange our lives from now on. We women understand such things better than you impractical men.”

My father slept until sunset. When we had dressed in the new clothes the clothing steward had laid out for us, the house was suddenly filled with guests. Most of them were quite young, happy and cheerful people, but among them were also two fat old men of debauched appearance whom I could not respect although one of them was a senator. I could at least talk about horses to a senior centurion from the Praetorian Guard, but to my surprise he showed a much greater interest in the women who, after drinking wine without restraint, loosened their clothes to be able to breathe more freely.

When I noticed which way this marriage feast was developing, I went to find Barbus, whom the servants had been generously regaling. He was holding his head and said, “I have experienced greater hospitality licit: than I have ever known before and would Have even been married oil’ in a flash if I hadn’t, as an old veteran, known when to call a halt. This house is no place for you, Minutus, nor for an old soldier like me either.”

The music played on and naked dancers and acrobats were writhing all over the floors as I went in search of my father. He was lying on a couch beside Tullia in gloomy silence.

“Perhaps it is the custom in Rome,” I said, “that noble women are sick all over the place and the men make indecent gestures at me, but I simply cannot tolerate that anyone seems to think they have the right to paw me anywhere on my body. I’m neither a slave nor a eunuch. I want to go home.”

“I’m much too weak-willed and comfortable,” my father admitted, “to extract myself from this depravity, but you must try to be stronger than I. I’m glad to hear your decision, and that you yourself have made it. I am forced to stay here, for no one can avoid his destiny, but it would be better if you lived with Aunt Laelia, and anyhow you have your own fortune now. You would gain nothing by living in your stepmother’s house.”

Tullia was not looking at me so kindly as she had the previous evening. I asked if I could come the next morning to fetch my father so that we could choose a horse for me, but she briskly cut me off with the words, “Your father is too old to ride. He would only fall off the horse and injure his valuable head. At the centenary festival parade he can lead his horse.”

I realized I had lost my father, and a sense of desolation came over me, for I had experienced his favor for a very short time. But I also realized that it was better for me to harden myself and create a life of my own. I went in search of Aunt Laelia, hitting out as hard as I could at a half-naked woman with glittering eyes who tried to hang around my neck. But the blow on her backside only spurred her on, so Barbus was forced to pull her away.

Tullia was so pleased to be rid of us so easily that she let us take her own sedan. Inside the sedan Aunt Laelia adjusted her clothes and began to chatter.

“I’ve heard a great deal of gossip about what goes on in the new houses in Rome,” she said, “but I could not believe my ears. Valeria Tullia is considered to be a decent woman. Perhaps marriage has made her quite unrestrained after the abstemious life of widowhood, although there were many fine men who seemed to make themselves at home at her house. Your father will have much to do keeping her in order.”

Early next morning, while we were eating our bread and honey, I spoke to Barbus.

“I must go and choose a horse,” I said, “and I must do it alone, for now that I am an adult I don’t need a companion as I did as a boy. Now you have the chance to realize your dream of becoming an innkeeper.”

“I have looked at several pleasant inns in different parts of Rome,” replied Barbus seriously, “and I am also in a position to buy one, thanks to your father’s goodness. But when all is said and done, the idea no longer delights me as it did in the days when I slept on the bare ground and drank the legion’s sour wine. And also an inn needs a woman as well as a landlord, but in my experience good landladies are very hardhearted women. In fact I’d prefer to stay in your service for the time being. Of course, you don’t need me any longer as a protector, but I’ve noticed that every knight who is the slightest concerned with his dignity usually has one companion or more, some even ten or a hundred if they are going out of the city. So it would be wisest if only for your own sake that you had a scarred old veteran with you.

“The cavalry is another matter,” he went on, “but I fear you have several difficult weeks ahead of you. In the eyes of the others you are nothing but a recruit. I’ve told you how they train recruits in the legion, but you probably didn’t believe it all and thought I was exaggerating a bit, perhaps to amuse you. Above all, you must remember to control yourself, clench your teeth and never be angry with a superior. We’ll go there together. Perhaps I can give you some advice.”

As we walked through the city to Mars field, Barbus remarked sadly, “I should really have the right to bear the insignia of an under-centurion, the mural crown, if only I hadn’t been so given to fighting after drinking. Even the chain I received in memory of Tribune Lucius, that time I swam across the Danube between the ice floes with him bleeding on my back, ended up in pawn in some wretched barbarian inn in Mesia, and I never got it out again before we were moved on. But we could go and look in some weapon shop and buy a secondhand souvenir chain. Perhaps you’d be better treated if your companion was wearing one round his neck.”

I said that he had sufficient insignia of honor on his tongue, but Barbus insisted on going in and buying a triumph badge of copper on which the inscription was so worn that one could not discern who it was had once given them out to his veterans. But when Barbus fastened it at his shoulder, he said he felt more secure among all the cavalrymen.

On the great field there were about a hundred young knights practicing for the centenary equestrian games. The stablemaster was a big churlish man who laughed loudly when he read the certificate I had received from the quaestor at the Noble Order of Knights.

“We’ll soon find a suitable horse for you, young man,” he shouted. “Do you want a big one or a small one, a wild one or a quiet one, a white one or a black one?”

He led us to the stable of available horses. I pointed to one and saw another which I liked, but he looked in his papers and said coldly that they were already taken.

“It’d be safest if you had a quiet horse which is used to the exercises and the noise of the circus and which knows the horn signals, if you’re thinking of taking part in the centenary parade,” he said. “Have you done any riding before?”

I admitted modestly that I had practiced a bit in Antioch, for Barbus had told me not to boast, and I added that I thought all cavalry horses were used to horn signals.

“But I’d be glad to take an unbroken horse and break it in myself,” I dared to suggest. “However, I realize that I’d not have time to do that before the festival.”

“Excellent, excellent!” cried the stablemaster, almost choking with laughter. “There aren’t many youngsters who know how to break in a horse. So help me, Hercules, to keep me from bursting. Professionals do the breaking in here.”

One of the professionals came up at that moment and looked me over from head to foot.

“We’ve got Arminia,” he suggested. “She’s used to the circus racket and stands still even if you drop a sack of stones in her saddle.”

He showed me a large black mare who turned in her stall and gave me a look of distrust.

“No, no, not Arminia,” said the stablemaster in horror. “She’s much too sedate for such a young man. She’s so handsome and yet as gentle as a lamb. We must keep her for some old senator who wants to ride in the parade.”

“Naturally, I had not thought to receive a horse for nothing,” I said, “just with a certificate. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to try this horse.”

“He wants to try it and pay for it as well,” said die breaker-in delightedly.

After a few protests, the stablemaster finally agreed.

“It’s much too quiet a horse for a boy like you,” he said, “but get your boots on and your riding kit. Meanwhile I’ll have the horse saddled.”

I told him that I had nothing with me to wear, but the stablemaster looked at me as if I were mentally deficient.

“You weren’t going to ride in parade costume, were you?” he said. “The State pays for your practice clothes.”

He took me to the equipment room and helpful slaves laced the chest harness so tightly that I found it hard to breathe. I was given a battered helmet and an old pair of short boots. They did not give me a shield, sword or spear, but told me to be content with testing my ability to ride the first time.

The mare trotted cheerfully out of the stable and neighed grandly, but at a command from the stablemaster stood absolutely still. I mounted with the reins in my hand, and asked to have the stirrup straps adjusted to the right length.

“I can see you’ve ridden before,” said the stablemaster approvingly.

Then he bawled out in a thunderous voice: “The knight Minutus Lausus Manilianus has chosen Arminia and is thinking of riding her!”

The riders out on the exercise field scattered to the edges, a trumpet blew the signal to attack, and immediately a game began which more by good luck than skill I managed to survive unscathed. I barely had time to hear a warning from the stablemaster to spare the mare’s tender mouth and not pull too hard on the reins-but Arminia seemed to have a mouth of iron. Reins and bit were completely unknown to her. To begin with, she jerked backward in order to throw me over her head. When this did not succeed, she began bucking and rearing and then set off at a wild gallop, employing all the tricks an experienced circus horse can find to throw an inexperienced rider. I realized only too well why the others had scattered and fled to the edges of the field when Arminia was let loose.

I could do nothing but hang on with all my strength and keep her head at least turned slightly to the left, for she rushed straight at the fence around the field and then stopped suddenly, trying to crush my head against the posts. When despite her efforts I remained on her back, she went quite mad and took great leaps over the obstacles on the field. She was in truth an overwhelmingly powerful and cunning horse, so that when I had recovered from my first fright, I began to enjoy the ride. I let out one or two wild yells and kicked her flanks with my heels to let her work off her rage and tire herself out.

Astonished, Arminia tried to look back at me and obeyed the reins just sufficiently for me to guide her straight at the stablemaster and the breaker in. They hurriedly stopped laughing and scuttled behind the stable door. The stablemaster shouted an order, his face scarlet with fury. A trumpet blared, a troop formed into line and began to trot toward me.

Hut Arminia did not swerve away, however much I pulled at the reins. Spluttering lather and swinging her head, she carried me at full gallop straight at the closed ranks of riders. I was sure I would be thrown, but either the leading riders lost courage or they must have deliberately opened the line at the last moment to let me through. But each one who could reach tried to sweep me out of the saddle with his wooden spear or hit me over the back as the furious Arminia took me, biting, leaping and kicking, right through the group of riders without my receiving more than a few bruises.

This vicious and deliberate attempt to frighten me made me so angry that I mustered all my strength and managed to turn Arminia in order to try to unseat some of the riders myself. But at the last moment I remembered Barbus’ advice, controlled myself and instead rode past them shouting, laughing and waving a greeting.

When Arminia had worked off her rage, she at last calmed down and became irreproachably obedient. When I dismounted in front of the stable, she did try to bite my neck, but I think it was mostly in fun and I contented myself in return by butting her with my elbow under her muzzle.

The stablemaster and the breaker-in looked at me as if I were a monster, but the stablemaster pretended to be angry.

“You’ve ridden her into a lather and torn the mouth of a valuable horse so that it bled,” he said reproachfully. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s my own horse and my own business how I ride it,” I answered.

“You’re quite wrong,” he said angrily. “You can’t ride her at practices because she won’t stay in line and doesn’t obey orders. She’s used to being ahead of the others.”

Several of the riders had left their horses and had gathered in a circle around us. They encouraged me and cried out that I was a good rider and they all agreed that the stablemaster had allotted me the horse by shouting it out for all to hear.

“Don’t you see it was a joke?” the stablemaster finally had to admit. “Every recruit has to try Arminia the first time, if he’s not too feeble. Arminia is a real warhorse and no miserable parade nag. She’s even fought with wild animals in the amphitheater. Who do you think you are, you insolent boy?”

“Joke or not,” I protested, “I stayed in the saddle and you fell into your own trap. It’s a shame to keep a fine horse like that shut up for days on end just to use for frightening recruits. Let’s meet each other halfway. I want to ride her every day, but for practices I’ll take another horse if she can’t keep in line.”

The stablemaster called on all the gods of Rome to bear witness that I had demantled two horses instead of one, but the others were on my side and cried out that he had played his joke with Arminia long enough. Every one of them had a bump or a scar or a broken bone to remind them of their attempts to ride Arminia as recruits, although they had all been riding since infancy. If I were mad enough to want to break my neck then I had a right to have Arminia. She was in any case the property of the Order of Knights.

But I did not want to quarrel with the stablemaster, so I promised him a thousand sesterces as a tip and said I should like to stand everyone some wine to wet my riding boots. In this way I was taken into the Roman cavalry and made friends among my contemporaries and also among the older youths. After a while I was chosen to join the elite riders in place of a youngster who had broken his leg, and we started practicing seriously for the competitive games at the centenary festivities. They were sufficiently dangerous that no one was allowed to take part simply because of noble birth or wealth, but only according to his own skill and ability. So I was proud of being chosen.

It is unnecessary to continue boasting about my success in the equestrian games. We were divided into two sections which performed a regular cavalry battle at the great circus at the centenary feast. It was a rough game, although it was prescribed that neither side either won or lost. I managed to stay on Arminia’s back right to the end but after that I had to be carried home and I saw little of the displays in the amphitheater or the performances at the circus which were supposed to be the most brilliant and best organized that had ever been seen in Rome. In the middle of the festivities, many of my friends found the time to come and see me on my sickbed and assured me that without me they would have won much less honor and glory. I contented myself with having ridden my black mare and with having heard a couple of hundred thousand people roaring with excitement and shouting my praises before I broke several ribs and my left thigh. But I had stayed in the saddle on Arminia until the very end.

The most significant political outcome of the centenary festival was that people paid great tribute to Emperor Gaius’ nephew, that ten-year old Lucius Domitius, who beautifully and fearlessly led the more innocent displays of the boy riders. Claudius’ own son, Britannicus, was put completely in the shade. The Emperor did call him up to his box and tried his best to show him to the people, but the crowd only shouted for Lucius Domitius and he received the acclaim with such modesty and good manners that everyone was even more delighted.

As far as I was concerned, I should have been lame for life if the cavalry doctor from the temple of Castor and Pollux had not been so skillful. He handled me cruelly and I suffered fearful pain. I had to lie in splints for two whole months. After that I had to practice walking on crutches and could not leave our house for long.

The pain, the fear of being a cripple and the discovery of how fleeting are all success and fame were certainly good for me. At least I did not become involved in the many fights which the wildest of my friends joined in at night in the streets of Rome during the general excitement of the festival. At first I thought that my enforced confinement in bed and the intolerable pain were part of fate’s efforts to determine my character. I was lonely, once more abandoned by my father because of his marriage. I had to decide for myself what I wished from my life.

As I lay in bed right into that hot summer, I was seized with such melancholy that everything that had hitherto happened seemed to be quite meaningless. Aunt Laelia’s good and nourishing food tasted of nothing. At night I could not sleep. I thought of Timaius, who had committed suicide because of me. For the first time I realized that a good horse was perhaps not after all the best in life. I had to find out for myself what was best for me, duty and virtue or comfort and enjoyment. The writings of philosophers which had formerly bored me suddenly became meaningful. And I did not have to think very hard for long before I realized that discipline and self-control gave me more satisfaction than childish lack of restraint.

The most faithful among my friends turned out to be Lucius Pollio, the son of a senator. He was a slender, frail youth only a few years older than I, and he had only just managed to get through the riding exercises. He had been attracted to me because my disposition was the exact opposite to his, rough, self-confident and irresponsible, and yet I had never spoken a harsh word against him. That much I had probably learned from my father, so I was more friendly to those who were weaker than to those who were like me. I was reluctant, for instance, to strike a slave, even if he were insolent.

In the Pollio family there had always been bookish and scientific interests. Lucius himself was also much more of a bookworm than a rider. The riding exercises were for him nothing but a tedious duty which he had to endure for the sake of his career and he did not enjoy hardening his body. He came to me with books from his father’s library which he thought would be good for me to read. He envied me my perfect Greek. His secret dream was to be a writer, although his father, Senator Mummius Pollio, took it for granted that he would be an administrator.

“What’s the use of my wasting several years on riding and listening to cases?” said Lucius rebelliously. “In time I’ll be given command of a maniple with an experienced centurion under me and after that I’ll be in command of a cavalry division somewhere in the provinces. In the end I’ll become a tribune on the staff of some legion building roads at the other end of the world. Not until I’m thirty can I apply for the office of quaestor, if one can get dispensation on the grounds of age because of one’s own or one’s family’s merits. I know perfectly well that I’ll be a bad officer and a wretched official because I’ve no real interest in such activities.”

“While I’ve been lying here, I’ve been thinking that perhaps it’s not all that clever to get one’s limbs broken for a moment of glory,” I admitted. “But what would you really like to do?”

“Rome already rules over the whole of the world,” said Lucius, “and is not seeking new conquests. The god Augustus sensibly limited the number of legions to twenty-five. Now the most important thing to do is to convert Rome’s crude habits to those of Greek civilization. Books, poetry, drama, music and dance are more important than the blood-drenched performances at the amphitheater.”

“Don’t take away the races,” I said. “At least one can see fine horses there.”

“Gambling, promiscuity and shameless orgies,” said Lucius gloomily. “If I try to get a symposium going to talk in Greek in the way the old philosophers did, it always ends up with dirty stories and a drunken orgy. In Rome it’s impossible to find a society interested in good music and song or which would appreciate classical drama more than adventure stories and dirty jokes. Most of all I’d like to go and study in Athens or Rhodes, but my father won’t let me. According to him Greek culture has only an effeminate effect on the manly virtues of

Roman youth. Just as if there were nothing left of the earlier Roman virtues except hollow pretense and pomp and ceremony.”

But I gained much from Lucius too, for he willingly told me about the administration and key offices of Rome. According to his innocent conception, the Senate could reverse a bill of the Emperor, while again the Emperor as a people’s tribune for life, could block a bill by the Senate with his right of veto. Most of the Roman provinces were ruled by the Senate through the Proconsuls, but some were more or less the Emperor’s private property, the administration of which was his own responsibility. The Emperor’s most important province was Egypt; also countries tied to Rome and several kingdoms, the regents of which had been brought up since childhood in the Palatine school and had learned Roman customs. I had not really realized before how basically clear and sensible this apparently involved form of government was.

I explained to Lucius that I myself wanted to be a cavalry officer more than anything else. Together we went through the possibilities available to me. I had no chance of gaining entry into Rome’s Praetorian Guard for the sons of senators took up all the vacancies for tribunes there. In the border country of Mauretania one could hunt lions. In Britain there was endless border fighting. The Germans were disputing with Rome over grazing lands.

“But you can hardly win battle honors even if you do take part in a bit of fighting here and there,” said Lucius. “Border scuffles are not even reported, for the legion’s most important task is to keep the peace along the borders. A legion commantler who is too enterprising and anxious for war loses his post before he can turn around. In fact an ambitious man has the best chance of promotion in the navy. An officer in the navy needn’t even be a knight by birth. There isn’t even a temple of Poseidon in Rome. You’d have a good income and a comfortable life. You could count on the command of a ship from the start. A good helmsman would of course look after the navigation side. Usually no one of noble birth ever goes into the navy.”

I was sufficiently Roman, I replied, that it did not seem much of a life for a man to be rowed from one place to another, especially now that one had heard no mention of pirates within living memory. I could do the most good in the East, for I could speak Aramaic like everyone else who had grown up in Antioch. But I was not attracted to building roads and living in garrison towns where the legionaries had permission to marry and settle and the centurions could become successful merchants. I did not want to go to the East.

“Why should you bury yourself at the other end of the world anyhow?” asked Lucius. “It would be incomparably better to stay here in Rome where sooner or later one is noticed. With the help of your riding skill, your fine figure and beautiful eyes, you could go further in a year here than in twenty years as a commantler of a cohort among the barbarians.”

Irritable from my long stay in bed and from sheer contrariness, I said, “Rome in the heat of the summer is a sweating stinking city full of filthy flies. Even in Antioch the air was fresher.”

Lucius looked searchingly at me in the belief that I had meant more with my words than I had.

“Undoubtedly Rome is full of flies,” he admitted. “Real carrion flies too. It would be better if I kept my mouth shut because I know perfectly well your father retrieved his rank of knighthood thanks only to the Emperor’s conceited freedman. I suppose you know that delegates from cities and kings bow and scrape to Narcissus and that he has amassed a fortune of a couple of hundred million sesterces by selling privileges and official positions. Valeria Messalina is even more avaricious. By having one of the oldest men in Rome murdered, she acquired the gardens of Lucullus on the Pincian hill. She has had her rooms in Palatine made into a brothel and not content with that, she spends many nights in disguise and under a false name in the bawdy houses in Subura, where she sleeps wdth anyone for a few coppers just for the fun of it.”

I clapped my hands over my ears and said that Narcissus was a Greek with fine manners and I could not believe the things that were said about the Emperor’s beautiful wife with her clear ringing laugh.

“Messalina is only seven years older than we are,” I said. “She also has two lovely children and at the festival performances she sits with the Vestal Virgins.”

“Emperor Claudius’ shame and ignominy in the marriage bed are well known as far away as in the enemy countries, in Parthia and in Germany,” Lucius said. “Gossip is gossip, but I personally know young knights who boast that they’ve slept with her on the Emperor’s orders. Claudius orders everyone to obey Messalina, whatever she demands of them.”

“Lucius,” I said, “what young men boast about you know only too well from your symposiums. The shyer one is in the company of women, the more one boasts and invents conquests when one has had a bit of wine to drink. That such gossip is known abroad too, seems to me to show that it is deliberately spread by someone. The bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed. Human beings have a natural tendency to believe what they are told. Just that kind of lie which tickles a depraved palate, people believe most easily.”

Lucius flushed.

“I have another explanation,” he whispered in an almost trembling voice. “Perhaps Valeria Messalina really was a virgin when she was married at fifteen to that fifty-year-old depraved drunkard Claudius, whom even his own family despised. It was Claudius who debauched Messalina, giving her myrrh to drink so that she became a nymphomaniac. Now Claudius is finished and it’s not impossible that he deliberately closes his eyes. In any case he certainly demands of Messalina that she constantly sends new slave-girls to his bed, the younger the better. What he does to them is another matter. All this Messalina herself has in tears confessed to a person whom I do not wish to name but whom I believe absolutely.”

“We are friends, Lucius,” I said, “but you are of very noble birth and son of a senator, so you’re not competent to speak on the subject. I know that the Senate brought in the republic when Emperor Gaius was murdered. Then the Praetorians accidentally found his uncle, Claudius, hiding behind a curtain when they plundered Palatine and proclaimed him Emperor because he was the only one who held that right by birth. It’s such an old story that no one even laughs at it anymore. But I’m not surprised that Claudius relies more on his freedmen and his children’s mother than on the Senate.”

“Would you choose a mentally deranged tyrant before freedom?” asked Lucius bitterly.

“A republic under the Senate and the Consuls doesn’t mean democratic freedom, but is rule by aristocracy,” I said. “Plundering of the provinces and new civil wars, that much do I understand from the history I have read. Be content with reforming Rome from within with Greek culture and don’t talk nonsense.”

Lucius was forced to laugh.

“It’s strange that one has absorbed the ideals of republicanism with one’s mother’s milk,” he said. “It makes me hotheaded. But perhaps the republic is nothing but a relic of the past. I’m going back to my books. Then I can do no harm to anyone, not even to myself.”

“And Rome can remain full of carrion flies,” I conceded. “Neither you nor I can get rid of them.”

The most surprising honor which came my way as I lay tormented by my inactivity and my gloomy thoughts was a visit from the leader of the noble boys, the ten-year-old Lucius Domitius. He came with his mother, Agrippina, quite unpretentiously and without prior notice. They left their sedan and following outside the house and only came in for a brief moment to commiserate with me over my accident. Bar-bus, who during my illness was acting as doorkeeper to the household, was of course drunk and asleep. Domitius jokingly gave him a light punch on the forehead and shouted out an order, at which Barbus, dazed with sleep, sprang to attention, raised his hand in salute and barked, “Ave, Caesar imperator.”

Agrippina asked him why he greeted the boy as an Emperor. Barbus said that he had dreamt that a centurion had hit him on the head with his stave. When he had opened his eyes he had seen in front of him, in the midday sun, a huge celestial Juno and an Emperor in glittering armor inspecting their troops. Not until they had spoken to him had his sight cleared and he had recognized Domitius and guessed that Agrippina was his mother by her goddesslike beauty and stature.

“And I wasn’t far wrong,” he said flatteringly. “You are sister to Emperor Gaius and Emperor Claudius is your uncle. On the god Julius Caesar’s side you are descended from Venus and on Marcus Antonius’ side from Hercules. So it’s not all that strange that I greeted your son with the highest possible token of honor.”

Aunt Laelia was completely confused by such a grand visitation and ran around with her wig askew, straightening out my bedclothes and chattering reproachfully that Agrippina should have informed us beforehand of her arrival so that the household could have been prepared.

“You know very well, dear Laelia,” said Agrippina sadly, “that it’s safest for me to avoid official visits since the death of my sister. But my son had to come and see his hero Minutus Lausus. So we looked in to wish him a quick recovery.”

This lively, attractive and, despite his red hair, handsome boy hurried shyly up to give me a kiss and then drew back in admiration as he looked at my face.

“Oh, Minutus,” he cried. “You have indeed earned the name Magnus more than any other. If only you knew how I admired your amazing courage. None of the spectators had the slightest idea that you’d broken your leg when you remained in the saddle right to the end.”

Domitius took a scroll from his mother and handed it to me. Agrippina turned to Aunt Laelia apologetically.

“It’s a book on balance of mind,” she explained, “which my friend Seneca has written in Corsica. It’s a good book for a youngster who is suffering from the consequences of his own foolhardiness. If he at the same time should wonder why such a noble-minded man must spend his life buried alive in exile, then it is because of the present situation in Rome and not because of me.”

But Aunt Laelia did not have the patience to listen. She was much too taken up with offering some kind of refreshment. It would have been a matter of shame if such distinguished guests had left without partaking of anything.

Agrippina protested but finally said, “In your house, we should be glad to taste a little of that refreshing lemon drink which your brave invalid has in a jug by his bed. My son can share one of the buns.”

Aunt Laelia stared at her with wide-open eyes.

“Dearest Agrippina,” she said in horror, “have things already reached such lengths?”

Agrippina was then thirty-four years old. She was a statuesque woman, her features aristocratic if also expressionless, and her eyes were large and brilliant. To my horror, I saw those clear eyes fill with tears. She lowered her head and wept silently.

“You guess correctly, Laelia,” she said at last. “It is safest for me to fetch water from the pipe with my own hands for my son, and for me to choose from the market what I dare eat myself and let him eat. The people cheered him too openly at the festivities. Three days ago someone tried to kill him at his midday siesta. I no longer even trust the servants. It was strange that none of them was near and that a complete stranger with evil intentions could get into the house without any of them seeing him. So it occurred to me-but perhaps it’s best to say nothing.”

Naturally Aunt Laelia was curious, which had perhaps been the intention all along, and she began to question Agrippina about what it was that had occurred to her.

“I thought that Lucius needed the constant companionship,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, “of a few young noblemen whose loyalty I could rely on and who at the same time would set him a good example. But no, no, it would only bring them misfortune. They would be jeopardizing their futures.”

Aunt Laelia was not very pleased with this suggestion and I was not really sure enough of myself to dare think that Agrippina meant me.

But Lucius put his hand shyly on mine and cried, “If you, Minutus, were by my side, I’d never be afraid of anything or anyone.”

Aunt Laelia began to stammer that it could be misunderstood if Lucius Domitius began to gather a following of nobles around his person.

“I can already walk a little on crutches,” I said quickly. “Soon my thigh will have healed. Perhaps I’ll be lame for life, but if it doesn’t make me look foolish, I’d be glad to be Lucius’ companion and protect him until he’s old enough to look after himself. That won’t be very long. You are already big for your age and you can ride and use weapons.”

To be quite honest, he looked more girlish than manly, with his graceful movements and his elaborate hair style. This impression was strengthened even more by the milk-white complexion that redheads usually have. But I remembered he was only ten and yet could ride a horse and drive a chariot at displays. A boy like that could not be completely childish.

We talked for a little while longer, about horses and Greek poets and singers he seemed to admire, but we came to no particular decision. I realized that I should be welcome at Agrippina’s house at any time. They left and Agrippina asked her purse-bearer to give Barbus a gold coin.

“She’s very lonely,” explained Aunt Laelia afterwards. “Her noble birth keeps her apart from other people and her equals daren’t be seen with her for fear of incurring the Emperor’s displeasure. It’s sad to see such an exalted woman turning to a lame young nobleman for friendship.”

I was not hurt by her words, for I had myself wondered the same thing.

“Is she really afraid of being poisoned?” I asked carefully.

Aunt Laelia snorted.

“She makes too much of things,” she said. “No one is murdered in broad daylight in an inhabited house in the middle of Rome. The story sounded invented to me. You’d better not get mixed up in that sort of thing. It is true that Emperor Gaius, the dear boy, had a chest full of poisons with which he experimented. But Emperor Claudius had it destroyed and poisoners are always severely punished. You know, I suppose, that Agrippina’s husband, Lucius’ father Domitius, was a brother of Domitia Lepida, Messalina’s mother? When Lucius was three, he inherited everything from him, but Gaius kept it all. Agrippina was exiled and to survive she had to learn to dive for sponges on an island far away. Lucius was cared for by his aunt, Domitia. The hairdresser, Anicetus, was his tutor as you can still see from his hair. But now Domitia Lepida has quarreled with her daughter Messalina, and is one of the few who dare to be seen openly with Agrippina and spoil Lucius. Messalina uses the name of her grandfather, Valerius Messala, to show she is directly descended from the god Augustus. The mother is angry with her because she all too openly shows her affection for Gaius Silius, goes with him everywhere, is as at home in his house and with his freedmen and slaves as she is at her own, and has even taken valuable inherited furniture there from Palatine. On the other hand, it is all very natural, for Silius is the handsomest man in Rome. It could even all be quite innocent, as it’s all so open. A young woman can’t be forever in the company of a bad-tempered old drunkard. Claudius inevitably neglects her because of his official duties and in his spare time he prefers to play dice to going to the theater. He prefers to go to the amphitheater too, to see the wild animals tearing criminals to pieces, and that’s not very suitable for a refined young woman to watch.”

“That’s enough about Messalina now,” I cried, clapping my hands to my ears. “My head is in a whirl of relationships between these families.”

But Aunt Laelia had been roused by our distinguished visitors.

“The whole thing is quite simple,” she went on. “The god Augustus was the grandson of the god Julius Caesar’s sister. By his sister Octavia’s first marriage, Messalina is the daughter of Octavia’s grandson, while Emperor Claudius, by Octavia’s second marriage with Marcus Antonius, is grandson to Octavia. Agrippina is his niece, but at the same time widow of Octavia’s second grandson Gnaius Domitius, so Lucius Domitius is therefore-listen now-at the same time grandson to Octavia’s first daughter and grandson to the second daughter and in fact a sibling to Messalina.”

“Then Emperor Claudius has married for the third time, to his mother’s half sister’s granddaughter who calls herself Valeria Messalina, if I’ve got it right,” I said. “In fact then, Messalina is of just as noble birth as Agrippina?”

“More or less,” admitted Aunt Laelia. “But she has none of Marcus Antonius’ depraved blood in her, which the others all suffer so much from. Her son Britannicus has of course some of it through Claudius to the extent… “

“To the extent…?” I repeated questioningly.

“Well, Claudius had an illegitimate child before,” Aunt Laelia said reluctantly, “It’s not absolutely certain that Britannicus is really his son, when one knows everything that’s said about Messalina. It was said at the time that that marriage was arranged by Emperor Gaius just to save the girl’s reputation.”

“Aunt Laelia,” I said solemnly. “From loyalty to the Emperor, I ought to denounce you for insults like that.”

“As if Claudius would believe anything bad about his lovely child-wife,” snorted Aunt Laelia.

But she looked around carefully all the same.

Afterwards I asked Barbus whether he had really had such a prophetic dream just as he had wakened from his drunken sleep, and he maintained stubbornly that he had in fact seen what he had described, although it could have come from the wine and the surprise.

“Wine makes you have such strange dreams in the heat of the summer,” he said, “that it’s quite frightening sometimes.”

When I had been walking on crutches for a while, the cavalry doctor found me a good masseur who treated my legs and exercised my slack muscles so well that I could soon walk unaided. I have worn a thick-soled shoe on the injured foot ever since, so my limp is scarcely noticeable.

I began to ride again, but soon noticed that only a very few young nobles chose to take part in the riding exercises. Most of them had no thought of a military career. For them it was sufficient if they could somehow remain in the saddle for next year’s parade.

A resdessness and a desire for activity seized me in the heat of the summer. Once or twice I went to see Lucius Domitius, but in spite of everything he was much too childish company for me. He was busy writing poems and he read verses to me from his wax tablet and asked me to correct them. He modeled surprisingly well and fashioned animals and people out of clay. He was very pleased if you praised him but was easily hurt if you made critical remarks, although he tried to hide it. He seriously suggested that I should take lessons from his dancing master so that I could learn to move gracefully with pleasing gestures.

“The art of dancing is not much use to anyone who is going to learn to use a sword and spear and shield,” I said.

Lucius said that he hated the sword fights at the amphitheater, in which rough gladiators injured and killed each other.

“I’m not going to be a gladiator,” I said, offended. “A Roman knight has to learn the skills of war.”

“War Is n Momly nnd unnecessary occupation,” he said. “Rome has given peace lo the world. But I’ve heard that a relation of my late father, Gnaius Domitius Corbulo, is skirmishing in Germany on the other side of the Rhine to earn the right of a triumph. If you really want to, I can write to him and recommend you as a tribune. But he’s a hard taskmaster and will make you work hard if he’s not posted away from there. I don’t think Uncle Claudius wants any of my father’s relations to become too famous.” _

I promised to think about the matter, but Barbus found out more about Corbulo and maintained that he had been more distinguished as a road builder in Gaul than a warrior in the forests of Germany.

Naturally I read the little book I had been given. The philosopher Seneca wrote in a fine modern style and asserted that a wise man could keep a balance of mind throughout the tests of fate. But I thought he was long-winded, for he gave no examples but just philosophized so that not many of his ideas stayed in my mind.

My friend Lucius Pollio also lent me a letter of condolence Seneca had written to the Emperor’s freedman Polybius. In it, Seneca was consoling Polybius over the death of his brother, telling him he need not grieve as long as he had the good fortune to be allowed to serve the Emperor.

What had amused readers in Rome was that Polybius had recently been executed after being found guilty of selling privileges. According to Pollio, he had quarreled with Messalina over the division of the money. Messalina had denounced him which the rest of the Emperor’s freedmen had not liked at all. So the philosopher Seneca had struck bad luck again.

I was surprised that Claudia had not tried to get in touch with me all through my illness. My self-esteem was hurt, but my good sense told me that I should have more trouble than joy from her. But I could not forget her black eyebrows, her bold eyes and her thick lips. When I was better, I began to go for long walks to strengthen my broken leg and to quell my restlessness. The warm Roman autumn had come. It was too warm to wear a toga and I did not wear my red-bordered tunic so as not to attract too much attention on the outskirts of the city.

I walked over to the other side of the river to avoid the stench of the city center, past Emperor Gaius’ amphitheater to which he had at immense expense had an obelisk brought all the way from Egypt, and then on up the Vatican hill. There was an ancient Etruscan oracle temple with wooden walls there which Emperor Claudius had had protected with a layer of tiles. The old soothsayer raised his stave to attract my attention, but did not bother to call after me. I walked down the far side of the hill, right out of the city toward the market gardens. Several prosperous-looking farms lay within sight. From here and from farther away, every night an endless stream of ratding bumping carts brought in the city’s vegetables which were then unloaded and sold to the dealers in the market halls before dawn, when they all had to leave the city.

I felt no desire to inquire after Claudia from the sunburnt slaves who were working in the vegetable fields, but went on my way. I let my feet take me where they wished to go, but Claudia had said something about a spring and some old trees. So I looked around and my thoughts led me the right way as I followed a dried-up stream bed. Below some ancient trees stood a little hut, near a large farm. In the vegetable field beside it crouched Claudia, her hands and feet black with earth, wearing only a coarse shift and a wide pointed straw hat to keep off the sun. At first I scarcely recognized her. But I knew her so well, although several months had gone by since we had last met, that I recognized her by her hand movements and her way of bending down.

“Greetings, Claudia,” I called. I was filled with exultant joy as I crouched down on the ground in front of her and looked at her face under the brim of the straw hat.

Claudia started and stared at me with her eyes widening in fright and her face flushing scarlet. Suddenly she flung a bunch of muddy pea stalks in my face, stood up and ran away behind the hut. I was flabbergasted by such a reception and swore to myself as I rubbed the earth out of my eyes.

I followed her hesitantly and saw that she was splashing in some water and washing her face. She shouted angrily at me and told me to wait on the other side of the hut. Not until she had combed her hair and put on clean clothes would she come back.

“A well-brought-up man gives notice when he is coming,” she snapped angrily, “but how can one expect such good manners from the son of a Syrian money-lender. What do you want?”

She had insulted me. I flushed and turned away without a word. But when I had taken a few steps, she came after me and took my arm.

“Are you really so touchy, Minutus?” she cried. “Don’t go. Forgive my hasty tongue. I was angry because you took me by surprise, ugly and dirty from work.”

She took me into her modest little hut which smelled of smoke, herbs and clean linen clothes.

“You see, I too can spin and weave, as Romans of old should be able to,” she said. “Don’t forget that in the old days even the proudest Claudian steered his oxen behind the plow.”

In this way she was trying to excuse her poverty.

“I prefer you like this, Claudia,” I replied politely, “with your face fresh from spring water, to all the painted silk-clad women of the city.”

“Of course,” Claudia admitted honestly, “I’d rather my skin were as white as milk and my face beautifully painted and my hair set in lovely curls on my forehead and my clothes revealing more than they concealed and myself smelling of the balsam of the East. But my uncle’s wife, Aunt Paulina Plautia, who has let me live here since my mother died, does not approve of such things. She is always dressed in mourning, prefers silence to speaking, and keeps away from her equals. She has more than enough money but she gives her income to charity and to even more doubtful purposes rather than allowing me to buy rouge and eye shadow.”

I could not help laughing, for Claudia’s face was so fresh and clean and healthy that she really had no need for cosmetics. I wanted to take her hand, but she jerked it away and snapped that her hands had become as rough as a slave-girl’s during the summer. I asked if she had heard about my accident, but she replied evasively.

“Your Aunt Laelia would never have let me in to see you,” she said. “Anyhow, I’ve become humble and realize that nothing but harm would come to you from knowing me. I wish you well, Minutus.”

I replied roughly that I could make my own decisions about my own life and choose my own friends.

“Anyhow, you’ll soon be rid of me,” I remarked. “I have a promise of a letter of recommendation to go to war against the Germans under the famous Corbulo. My leg is better and only a fraction shorter than the other one.”

Claudia quickly said she had not even noticed that I limped at all. Then she thought for a moment.

“Actually you are safer in the field,” she said sadly, “than in Rome where some strange woman can take you away from me at any moment. I should grieve less if through some foolish ambition you lost your life in war, than if you fell in love with someone else. But why do you have to go and fight against the Germans? They are horribly large, and powerful warriors. If I ask Aunt Paulina nicely, she’d certainly give you a letter of recommendation to my uncle, Aulus Plautius, in Britain. He commands four legions there and has been very successful. Obviously the Britons are much weaker opponents than the Germans since Uncle Aulus is no military genius. Even Claudius managed to claim a triumph in Britain, so the Britons can’t be very fierce opponents.”

I did not know this and I asked her eagerly for more details. Claudia explained that her mother was a Plautius. When Aulus Plautius’ wife, Paulina, had taken her husband’s parentless niece under her wing, Aulus had good-naturedly regarded Claudia as a member of his family, especially as they had no children of their own.

“Uncle Aulus did not like my mother, Urgulanilla, at all,” Claudia told me, “but in any case, Mother was also a Plautia and my uncle was very offended when Claudius, for indefensible reasons, divorced my mother and sent me naked to be laid on her threshold. In fact Uncle Aulus was prepared to adopt me but I am too proud for that. Legally I am and shall remain the daughter of Emperor Claudius, however repulsive his habits are.”

To me her descent was a dull topic of conversation, but the thought of the war in Britain excited me.

“Your legal father Claudius by no means tamed the Britons, even if he did celebrate it as a triumph,” I said. “On the contrary, the war goes on there all the time. It is said that your Uncle Aulus can already claim over five thousand enemy dead from several years’ fighting and that he thus has also earned a triumph. They are obstinate and treacherous people. As soon as there is peace in one part of the country, war breaks out again in another. Let’s go and find your Aunt Paulina at once.”

“You’re in a great hurry to gain military honors,” said Claudia teas-ingly. “But Aunt Paulina has forbidden me to go alone into the city and to spit on the Imperial statues. So I’d be glad to come with you, for I haven’t seen her for several weeks.”

We walked back into the city together and I hurried home to change into more suitable clothes. Claudia did not want to come in for fear of Aunt Laelia, but waited at the gate and talked to Barbus. When we went on to the Plautia house on the Celius hill, Claudia’s eyes were glittering with rage.

“So,” she cried, “you’ve been making friends with Agrippina and her cursed son, have you? That shameless old hag is a dangerous woman. Anyhow, she’s old enough to be your mother.”

I protested in surprise that while Agrippina was certainly beautiful, she was reserved in her manner and her son was much too young and childish for me.

“I know more than enough about those depraved Claudians,” snapped Claudia. “Agrippina sleeps with anyone if she thinks he might be useful. The Emperor’s treasurer, Pallas, has been her lover for a long time. She is trying to find a new husband, but in vain. The men who are noble enough are much too cautious to get involved in her intrigues, but anyone as inexperienced as you could be easily seduced by any immoral widowed matron of Rome.”

Bickering together, we walked through the city, but in fact Claudia was pleased when I told her that no one had seduced me yet and that I had remembered the promise I had made to her on the way home from the Moon temple the day I had received the man-toga.

In the Plautius courtyard there was a long row of busts of ancestors, death masks and war souvenirs. Paulina Plautia proved to be an old woman with large eyes which seemed to be looking straight through me. One could see from her eyes that she had been weeping. When she heard my name and errand, she was surprised and brushed my cheek with her thin hand.

“This is strange,” she said. “Like an unbelievable sign from the only God. Perhaps you don’t know, Minutus Manilianus, that your father and I became friends and exchanged a holy kiss when we had broken bread and drunk wine together at the love-feast. But something very evil has happened. Tullia had spies put on your father. When she had sufficient evidence she denounced me quite recently for having partaken in shameful Eastern mysteries.”

I realized at once from where Claudia had acquired her knowledge of the heresies of the Jews.

“By all the gods of Rome,” I cried in horror, “has my father really become involved in the conspiracies of the Christians as well? I thought he’d left all those fads behind in Antioch.”

The old woman looked at me with strangely brilliant eyes.

“Minutus,” she said. “It is not a fad but the only way to the truth and an eternal life. I’m not afraid to believe that the Jew and Nazarene Jesus was and is the son of God. He appeared to your father in Galilee and your father has more to tell about him than many a man here. He considers his marriage to the domineering Tullia to be God’s punishment for his sins. So he has said farewell to his former pride and received the holy Christian baptism, as I have. Neither of us is ashamed of it, even if there are not many rich or noble people among the Christians.”

This fearful news left me speechless. Claudia noticed my expression and said, “I’m not baptized into their faith, but on the other side of the Tiber, in the Jewish part of the city, I’ve listened to their teachings. Their mysteries and holy meals absolve them from all their sins.”

“Rowdies,” I said angrily, “eternal squabblers, troublemakers and rabble-rousers. I’ve seen it all in Antioch. The real Jews hate them worse than the plague.”

“One doesn’t have to be a Jew to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the son-of God,” said Paulina.

But I was not in the mood for theological discussion. In fact I saw red at the thought of my father sinking so low as to become a follower of the despicable Christians.

“My father must have been drunk again and hence full of compassion,” I said sternly. “So he will make any excuse to escape Tullia’s reign of terror. But he might have told his troubles to his own son.”

The woman with the large eyes shook her head when she heard me speaking disrespectfully of my father.

“Just before you came,” she said, “I heard that the Emperor, to save my husband’s reputation, will not agree to a public trial as a result of the denouncement. Aulus Plautius and I were married according to the longer form. So the Emperor is handing me over to be judged by my husband before the family court as soon as Aulus comes back from Britain. When you came here, I was wondering how I could get a message to my husband before he somehow happened to hear any exaggerated charges elsewhere and was shocked because of me. My conscience is clear, for I have done nothing shameful or wicked. Would you go to Britain immediately, Minutus, and bear a letter to my husband?”

I did not have the slightest desire to take this cheerless news to a famous soldier. All I could think of was that this was no way to win his favor. But the old woman’s mild eyes bewitched me. I did think that perhaps I owed her something, as she had got into difficulties because of my father. Otherwise Aulus Plautius might simply have had her killed, according to the old longer marriage form and family laws.

“This appears to be my fate,” I said. “I’m ready to go tomorrow, if you promise me that in your letter you do not involve me in your superstitions.”

She promised this and soon began to write the letter. Then I realized that if I took my own horse, Arminia, the journey would be a very long one, for she would have to rest now and then. So Paulina promised to get me a first-class courier’s plaque which gave me the right to use the Emperor’s own post-horses and wagons in the same way as a traveling senator. Paulina was, after all, the wife of the Commantler-in-Chief in Britain. But in return she demantled one thing more of me.

“On the slope of Aventine,” she said, “there lives a tentmaker called Aquila. Go to him after dark and tell him or his wife Prisca that I have been denounced. Then they’ll know to be on their guard. But if a stranger questions you, you can say I sent you to order tents for my husband in Britain. I daren’t send my own servants there, for my house is being watched because of the denouncement.”

I swore inwardly at being dragged into the Christians’ loathsome machinations in this way, but Paulina blessed me in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, touching my forehead and chest gently with the tips of her fingers, so I could say nothing. I promised to do as she asked and to return the next day, ready for the journey.

As we parted from her, Claudia sighed, but I was excited by this unexpected decision and the thought of the long journey which would solve all my problems. Despite Claudia’s hesitation, I wanted her to come into our house so that I could present her as my friend to Aunt Laelia.

“Now that my father has become a shameful Christian,” I said, “you have nothing to be ashamed of in our house. You are de jure the daughter of the Emperor and of noble birth.”

Aunt Laelia made the best of the situation. When she had collected herself after the first surprise, she took Claudia in her arms and looked at her carefully.

“You’ve grown into a lively, healthy young woman,” she said. “I used to see a great deal of you when you were a child and I remember well that dear Emperor Gaius always called you cousin. Your father behaved shamefully towards you, but how is Paulina Plautia? Do you really shear sheep with your own hands on her farm outside the walls, as I’ve been told?”

“Stay and talk together for a while,” I suggested. “I know women are never at a loss for anything to talk about. I must go and see my lawyer and my father, for early tomorrow morning I am going to Britain.”

Aunt Laelia burst into tears and wailed that Britain was a wet and misty island where the fearful climate permanently ruined the health of those who survived the fighting against the blue-painted Britons. At the time of Emperor Gaius’ triumph, she had been to the amphitheater and seen Britons cruelly fighting each other in the arena. On Mars field they had built, plundered and destroyed a whole British town, but in Britain itself there was presumably little chance of plunder, if the town in the victory performance had been like the home towns of the Britons themselves.

I left Claudia with her to console her, fetched money from my lawyer and then went to Tullia’s house to find my father. Tullia received me reluctantly.

“Your father,” she said, “has shut himself up in his room in his usual state of dejection and doesn’t want to see anyone. He hasn’t spoken to me for several days. He gives the servants orders by nods and gestures. Try to get him to speak before he turns quite dumb.”

I consoled Tullia and told her my father had had the same kind of attacks at home in Antioch. When she heard that I was going to Britain to fight in the army there, she nodded in approval.

“That’s a good idea,” she said. “I hope you will honor your father there. I have tried in vain to get him to interest himself in the affairs of the city. In his youth he studied law, although of course he has forgotten all that now. Your father is much too lazy and unenterprising to acquire a position which is worthy of him.”

I went in to see my father. He was sitting in his room with his head in his hands. He was drinking wine from his beloved wooden goblet and he stared at me with bloodshot eyes. I shut the door carefully behind me.

“Greetings from your friend Paulina Plautia,” I said. “Because of your holy kiss, she’s in trouble and has been denounced for superstition. I must go quickly to Britain with a message about the matter for her husband. I’ve come to ask you to wish me well on my journey in case I do not return. In Britain I shall probably join the army to complete my military service there.”

“I have never wanted you to be a soldier,” stammered my father, “but perhaps even that is better than living here in this Babylon of whores. I know my wife Tullia has brought unhappiness to Paulina by her jealousy, but it should have been I who was denounced. I have been baptized in their baptismal bath and they laid their hands on my head, but the spirit did not enter me. I shall never again speak to Tullia.”

“Father,” I asked, “what exactly does Tullia want from you?”

“That I become a senator,” my father replied. “That is what that monstrous woman has got into her head. I own enough land in Italy and am of sufficiently noble birth to be able to become a member of the Senate. And Tullia, by special dispensation, has obtained the rights of a mother of three children, although she has never bothered to have any. In my youth I loved her. She followed me to Alexandria and never forgave me for choosing your mother, Myrina. Now she talks on at me as one talks to an oxen, abuses me for my lack of ambition and will soon turn me into an incurable drunkard if I don’t do what she wants and become a senator. But Minutus, my son, there is no wolf blood in me, even though in all truth, many a worse man has sat in red boots on an ivory stool. Forgive me, my son. You understand now why under these circumstances I could do nothing else but declare myself a Christian.”

As I looked at my father’s swollen face and restless roving eyes, I was seized with great compassion. I realized that he had to find something worthwhile in his life to be able to bear living in Tullia’s house. Yet even being in the Senate would be better for his spiritual health than taking part in the secret meetings of the Christians.

As if he had read my thoughts my father looked at me, fingering the worn wooden goblet, and said, “I must stop partaking in the love-feasts, for my presence simply does harm to the Christians, as it has to Paulina. Tullia has, in her mortification, sworn to have them all banished from Rome if I don’t leave them. All this because of a few innocent kisses which are customary after the holy meals.”

“Go to Britain,” he went on, handing me his beloved wooden goblet. “The time has come for you to take over the only inheritance you have from your mother, before Tullia burns it in her anger. Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews, once drank from it, almost eighteen years ago, after he had risen from his tomb and gone to Galilee with the scars from the nails on his hands and feet and the sores from the lashes on his back. Don’t ever lose it. Perhaps your mother will be a little closer to you when you drink from it. I have not been the kind of father I should have wished to be.”

I took the wooden goblet which my father’s freedmen in Antioch maintained was blessed by the Goddess of Fortune. I thought that it had not protected my father from Tullia, if one did not consider this fine house, all the comforts of life and perhaps the honor of being a senator the greatest possible earthly success. But I felt a secret respect as I took the wooden goblet in my hands.

“Do me one more service,” my father said gently, “On the slopes of Aventine, there lives a tentmaker… “

“… whose name is Aquila,” I said ironically. “Quite. I am taking a message to him from Paulina. I can tell him at the same time that you too are leaving them.”

But my bitterness dissolved and melted away when my father gave me his beloved goblet as a memento. I embraced him and pressed my face against his tunic to hide my tears. He clasped me tightly to him, and we parted without looking at each other again.

Tullia was waiting for me in the high-backed chair of the mistress of the house.

“Have a care in Britain, Minutus,” she said. “It will be important for your father to have a son serving the State and the common good. I don’t know much about army life, but I’m given to understand that a young officer is more quickly promoted by being generous with his wine and playing dice with his men than by going on unnecessary and dangerous expeditions. Don’t be mean with your money, but incur debts if necessary. Your father can afford it. Then you’ll be considered normal in every way.”

On the way home I went into the temple of Castor and Pollux to inform the Curator of the cavalry of my journey to Britain. At home my Aunt Laelia and Claudia had become firm friends and had chosen the best kind of woolen underclothes for me as a protection against the raw climate of Britain. They had gathered other things for me too, so much that I should have needed at least a wagon to take them all. But I was not even going to take my armor, except my sword, as I thought it best to equip myself on the spot in accordance with what the country and circumstances demantled. Barbus had told me how they used to laugh at the spoilt Roman youths who brought quantities of unnecessary things with them on active service.

In the moist warm autumn evening, beneath the uneasy red sky, I went to see the tentmaker, Aquila. He was obviously quite a wealthy man, for he owned a large weaving business. He met me suspiciously at the door and looked around as if afraid of spies. He was about forty and did not look at all Jewish. He had no beard and no tassels on his mantle, so I took him for one of Aquila’s freedmen. Claudia had come with me and she greeted Aquila like an old friend. When he heard my name and the greetings from my father, his fear left him, although the uneasiness in his eyes was the same as I had seen in my father’s. He had vertical lines on his forehead like a soothsayer.

He asked us kindly to come into his house, and his fussy wife Prisca at once began offering us fruit and diluted wine. Prisca was at least a Jewess by birth, judging by her nose, a managing, talkative woman who had probably been very beautiful in her youth. Both were upset when they heard that Paulina had been denounced and that my father considered it best to leave their secret society so as not to harm them.

“We have enemies and people who envy us,” they said. “The Jews persecute us, hound us out of the synagogues and beat us in the streets. An influential magician, Simon from Samaria, hates us bitterly. But we are protected by the spirit who puts words in our mouths and so we need fear no earthly power.”

“But you are not a Jew,” I said to Aquila.

He laughed.

“I am a Jew and am circumcised, born in Trapezus in Pontus, on the southeast shore of the Black Sea, but my mother was a Greek and my father was baptized when he was celebrating Pentecost in Jerusalem once. There was much quarreling in Pontus when some people wanted to make sacrifices to the Emperor outside the synagogue. I moved to Rome and live here on the poor side of Aventine, like many Jews who no longer believe that to follow the law of Moses absolves them from their sins.”

“The Jews on the other side of the river hate us most,” explained Prisca, “because heathens who have listened to them prefer to choose our way and think it is easier. I don’t know if our way is easier. But we have compassion and the secret knowledge.”

They were not unpleasant people and lacked the usual superciliousness of the Jews. Claudia admitted that she and her Aunt Paulina had listened to their teachings. According to her, they had nothing to hide. Anyone could come and listen to them and some were moved to a state of ecstasy. Only the love-feasts were closed to outsiders, but that was also true of Syrian and Egyptian mysteries which occurred in Rome.

They kept repeating that everyone, slave or free, rich or poor, wise or dull, was equal in the eyes of their God, and they regarded everyone as their brothers and sisters. I did not entirely believe this as they had been so depressed to hear that my father and Paulina Plautia had left them. Claudia had assured them of course that Paulina had not done so in her heart but only outwardly to protect her husband’s good name.

The following morning I was given a horse for the journey and a courier’s plaque to wear on my chest. Paulina gave me the letter to Aulus Plautius and Claudia wept. I rode along the military highways right through Italy and Gaul.