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rectangular rooms built onto the main rectangle, one off another, the whole nestled in a huge garden high on the Palatine Hill. It was a house of marble floors and richly painted walls, the garden meandering and surrounding every room of it.
    I was the true jewel of my Father’s eye, and I remember having a marvelous time watching my brothers practice outside with their short broadswords, or listening as their tutors instructed them, and then having fine teachers of my own who taught me how to read the entire
Aeneid
of Virgil before I was five years old.
    I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them. I couldn’t have told you that nights ago, David. You’ve brought back something to meand I must make the admission. And I must not write too fast in this mortal café, lest human beings notice!
    Ah, so we continue.
    My Father thought it was hysterical that I could recite verses from Virgil at so young an age and he liked nothing better than to show me off at banquets at which he entertained his conservative and somewhat old-fashioned Senatorial friends, and sometimes Caesar Augustus himself. Caesar Augustus was an agreeable man. I don’t think my Father ever really wanted him at our house, however. But now and then, I suppose, the Emperor had to be wined and dined.
    I’d rush in with my nurse, give a rousing recital and then be whisked away to where I could not see the proud Senators of Rome glutting themselves on peacock brains and
garum
—surely you know what
garum
is. It’s the horrible sauce the Romans put on everything, rather like today’s ketchup. Definitely it defeated the purpose of having eels and squids on your plate, or ostrich brains or unborn lamb or whatever other absurd delicacies were being brought by the platterful.
    The point is, as you know, the Romans seemed to have a special place in their hearts for genuine gluttony, and the banquets inevitably became a disgrace. The guests would go off to the vomitorium of the house to heave up the first five courses of the meal so that they could then swallow the others. And I would lie upstairs, giggling in my bed, listening to all this laughter and vomiting.
    Then the rape of the entire catering staff of slaves would follow, whether they were boys or girls or a mixture of both.
    Family meals were an entirely different affair. Then we were old Romans. Everyone sat at the table; my Father was undisputed Master of his house, and would tolerate no criticism of Caesar Augustus, who, as you know, was Julius Caesar’s nephew, and did not really rule as Emperor by law.
    “When the time is right, he will step down,” said my Father. “He knows he can’t do it now. He is more weary and wise than ever he was ambitious. Who wants another Civil War?”
    The times were actually too prosperous for men of stature to make a revolt.
    Augustus kept the peace. He had profound respect for the Roman Senate. He rebuilt old Temples because he thought people needed the piety they had known under the Republic.
    He gave free corn from Egypt to the poor. Nobody starved in Rome. He maintained a dizzying amount of old festivals, games and spectacles—enough to sicken one actually. But often as patriotic Romans we had to be there.
    Of course there was great cruelty in the arena. There were cruel executions. There was the ever present cruelty of slavery.
    But what is not understood by those today is that there coexisted with all this a sense of individual freedom on the part of even the poorest man.
    The courts took time over their decisions. Theyconsulted the past laws. They followed logic and code. People could speak their minds fairly openly.
    I note this because it is key to this story: that Marius and I both were born in a time when Roman law was, as Marius would say, based on reason, as opposed to divine revelation.
    We are totally unlike those blood drinkers brought to Darkness in lands of Magic and