Caesar Dies

intersecting streets, each nearly four miles long, granite-pav

ters, and on foot; their linen clothes were as riotously picturesque as was the fruit displayed in open shop-fronts under the colonnades, o

ir masters, affecting in public a scorn that they did not feel but were careful to assert. The Romans were intensely dignified and wore the toga, pallium and tunic; the Antiochenes affected to think dignity was stupid and its trappings (forbidden to them) hideous; so they carried the contrary pose to extremes. Patterning herself on Alexandria, the city had become to all intents and purposes the eastern capital of Roman empire. North, south, east and west, the trade-routes intersected, entering the city through the ornate gates in crenelated limestone walls. From miles away the approaching caravans were overlooked by legionaries brought from Gaul and Britain, quartered in the c

orld-not even in Alexandria. Whenever an earthquake shook down blocks of buildings-and that happened nearly as frequently as the hysterical racial riots-the R

River Orontes at the northern end within the city wall. The never-neglected problem of administration

anny originating in the Roman patria potestas. There was not much sentiment about it. Rome became the foster-parent, the possessor of authority. There was duty, principally exacted from the governed in the form

us than the truth. Not since the days when Antioch inherited the luxury and vices of the Greeks and Syrians, had pleasure been so organized or its commercial pursuit so profitable. Taxes were collected rigorously. The demands of Rome, increased by the ex

nce the deification of the emperors it had become treason even to use a coarse expression near their images or statues; images were on the coins; statues were in the streets. Commodus, to whom all confiscated property accrued, was in ever- increasing need of funds to defray the titanic expense of the games that he lavished on Rome and the "presents" with which he studiously nursed

ss drew attention from the spies, the deepest thoughts were masked beneath an air of levity, an

x on the famous Arab mare that Sextus had won from Artaxes the Persian in a wager on th

oon in spring, when nearly all of fashionable Antioch was beginning to flow in that direction. Horses, litters and chariots, followed by crowds of slaves on foot with t

ould really com

nterrupted. He had an annoying way of fini

ampaigning Pertinax fin

omen in his way! Whereas Stoics like you, Sextus, and unfortunates like me, who don't know how to amuse a woman, are made notorious by one least lapse from our austerity. The handsome, dissolute ones ha

the desert Pertinax would have brought his own last desperate adorer, and a couple more to bore us while he makes himself

erienced a triumph after restoring discipline in Britain and conducting two or three successful wars; and if either of us had such a wife as Flavia Titiana, I believe we could besmirch ourselves more constantly than Pertinax does! It is not that he delights in women so much as that he thinks debauch is aristocratic. Flavia Titiana is unfaithful to him. She is also a patrician and unusually clever. He has neve

strange tim

strange beast we

care

now, before and behind, all bound for Daphne. As the riders passed under the city gate, where the golden cherubim that Titus took from the Jews' te

. "Some friends of ours will not see sunrise. Well

est crime nowadays is to have the appearance of be

rnestness that had been typically Roman in the sterner days of the Republic. He had blue-gray eyes that challenged destiny, and curly brown hair, that suggested flames as the west

ther Maximus," he said

her Maximus, and of my

ignity that men should

I despise Rome for

e in the world except

nus a

id Sextus. "I would like to speak of doin

d as a priest, whose duty was to see that travelers by that road did their homage to the image of the human god who ruled the Roman world. He struck a gong. He gave fair warning of the deference required. There was a little guard-house, fifty paces distant, just around the corner of the clump of trees, where the police were ready to execute summary justice, a

tossed coins to the priest's attendant slave. Sextus remained in the saddle, his brow clouded with an angry scowl

to me expensive!" Norb

ol

old, if I may kee

! He will take that

efore Commodus's spies could invent an excuse for confiscating our estates. I said, an absent man attracts less notice, and our estates are well worth plundering. I also hinted that Commodus can hardly live forever, and reminded him that tide

ent the Cappadocian cavorting to the road's edge,

ia; he will harry them all the more when that day comes- as it is sure to. Marcia is a Christian; when he tires of her he will use her Christianity for the excuse and throw the Christians to the lions by the thousand i

aulus when he kills lions with his javelin and drives a chariot in the races like a vulgar slave. But everybody knows, and he picks slaves for his m

uted finally. You are

appened to

e no answer to that letter I wrote to my father in

took that for a signal to exert himself and for a minu

demanded, when he had the

onth

t other men (himself, for instance) steadfastly avoided, and avoiding risks that other men thought insignificant. To write a letter critical of Commodus was almost t

f life?" he aske

ary of wondering what is to happen to Rome that submits to such bestial

ot only will you be proscribed and your father executed, but whoever is known to have been intimate with you or

here to protect his i

property in Antioch and

odern irreligious wastr

him in an id

while there is time!

ause I am your true friend. You are a rash, impatient lover of the days gone by, possessed of genius that you betray by your arrogant hastiness. So now you know what I think, and what all your other friends think. We admire-we love ou

he attitude of all his friends far better than he did his own strange impulses t

that a man should dare to do what he perceives is rig

enjoy the privilege of attending your cruc

laves and highway

hing people's sentences did not annoy Sextus nearly as much as Sextus's trick of pounding on inaccuracies irritated him. He pressed his horse into a canter and for a w

pretending to Augustan calmness that had actually ceased to be a part of public life. But with Sextus and Norbanus the inner struggle to be self-controlled was ge

crifices that tradition imposed on the heads of families and, in his father's frequent absence, had attended to all the details and responsibilities of managing a large estate. The gods of wood and stream and dale were very real to him. The daily offering, from each

d as a state of ignorance from which the world was tediously struggling. But inherently he loved life's decencies, although he mocked their sentimental imitations; and he followed Sextus-squandered hours with him, neglecting his own interests (which after all were nothing too important and were well enough looked after by a Syracusan slave), simply because Sextus was a manly sort of fellow whose frie

arked Sextus, "i

olish a soldier can be

ghing again, glad the

s who dragged dead gladiators out of the arena were disguised to represent Orcus) take h

s of the popu

is there we

the point. Now if we could get into Gal

stening. Pertinax dresses himself like a strutting peacock and pretends that women and money are his only interests, but what the wise ones said yeste

Glyco-you remember him?-that son of Cocles and the Jewess-asking me to join a secret mystery of which he claims to be the unextinguishable lamp. But there are too many mysteries and not enough plain dealing. The only mystery about Glyco is how he avoids indictment for conspiracy-what with his long nose and sly eyes, and his way of hinting that he knows enou

e plenty of men brave enough to give the dagger-thrust. But the praetorian guard, that makes and unmakes emperors, has been tasting the sweets of tyranny ever since Marcus Aurelius died. They despise their 'Roman Hercules' (Commodus' favorite name for him

o we go to talk abo

or infor

ty consuls in a year, each of whom paid for the office in turn-that no man's life is safe- that it is wiser to take a cold in the head to Galen than to kiss a mule's nose (it was

for more than a minute appeared to be studying Norbanus' fa

er serious?"

! Unlike you, I have not much more than life to lose, but I value it all the more for being less encumbered. Like Apollo

retorte

a business of pleasure as reduced the pleasure to a toil of Sisyphus (who had to roll a heavy stone perp

fool may have. I have a spirit in me and a taste for philosophies; I have a feelin

d Norbanus. "Come along, let us gallop. I am

ressed Antiochenes, who cursed them for the mud they splashed from wayside p