Here Herennius delivered an encomium to Dio, reciting his many honors and achievements, naming the men who had bravely given him shelter in his days of despair, mourning the loss of so brilliant a philosopher, lamenting the shame that had been visited upon Rome by his murder.

What of the final charge against Caelius, that of ruthlessly seeking the death by poison of a great Roman lady, the descendant of one of the city's oldest and proudest families, the widow of one of her most distin-guished citizens? The lady was present and would, strength permitting, testify herself to the outrage plotted against her.

At one point, Caelius had aligned himself with the lady's brother- just one more of his fickle, never-to-be-trusted alliances-and this brought him into the lady's acquaintance. Sad day for her! Young and good-looking, Caelius was a quite charmer, to be sure-proof of that was the fact that he'd talked two men he'd stabbed in the back into repre-senting him today! Using all his skills he had charmed the lady out of a rather large loan. Later, she had cause to regret her trust in the scoundrel, not only because the loan was never repaid-typical, predictable!- but because with mounting horror she realized the use to which Caelius had put the money. His Egyptian coffers had run dry, but his mission was not yet finished, so he used her gold to bribe another man's slaves to poison Dio. The realization shocked the lady to her senses. Disgusted with Caelius's indecency and his murderous bent, outraged that she had been duped into financing his crimes, she decided to do something about it; she agreed to appear as a witness at this trial. A brave act, to make herself the enemy of a murderer-and almost fatal, as it turned out. To silence her, Caelius decided to poison her.

"Those of us who have attended all too many trials for murder know the sad pattern," said Herennius, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. "Let a man once descend to using poison on another human being and, sooner or later, he will try the same thing again. Poisoning becomes a habit, a secret vice, like certain other things men do in the dark. Until he is stopped, by the law or by the gods, a poisoner will repeat his vile crime over and over again."

Thus, having fallen into this vice with his attempt on Dio-if indeed it was his first poisoning!-Caelius not surprisingly resorted to poison to rid himself of the troublesome lady. He tested the stuff first on one of his own slaves. (Not on one of his old, trusted slaves, to be sure; Caelius had purchased a slave specifically to test his poison, as one might buy a cheap garment intending to use it as a rag and then throw it away. If he cared to deny the fact, let Caelius produce that slave in court alive and well.) Then Caelius approached some of the lady's slaves (like a typical poisoner, repeating the same mode of operation) and tried to bribe them to administer the poison. But the loyal slaves betrayed the plot to their mistress, and she cleverly sought to trap Caelius's agent in the act of handing over the deadly stuff.

Herennius proceeded to give a completely straight-faced account of the disaster at the Senian baths, which provoked some snickering among the spectators; the story had made the rounds. To verify the incident, he said, the slaves whom Caelius had thought to suborn would testify. So that they would not have to suffer the indignities of torture, and to reward them for their loyalty, these slaves had been manumitted and would testify as freedmen.

Herennius sighed with exasperation. "Caelius's attempt to poison Dio failed. So did his first attempt on the lady. But still Caelius did not give up! Only hours ago, the lady came very close to death, thanks to Caelius's relentless, insidious efforts to do her in. Look at her now, at her pale face and languid eyes, at her helpless trembling! One need only see her to know that something truly terrible has transpired. 'What awful thing was done to her?' you ask. But no, I shall refrain from relating the sordid details of this latest, almost successful attempt to murder her. Since the gods have seen fit to spare her from Caelius's murderous plots, let her tell the story. Let the tale of her hairbreadth escape emerge from her own shocking testimony. I only pray to the gods that she will continue to recover and be strong enough to testify!"

Regarding this latest outrage, the judges would also hear the written confession of the wretched slave girl Caelius had seduced into betraying her mistress. Her testimony was even now being extracted under torture, as the law required.

There would also be a third, surprise witness to corroborate. Her-ennius cast a chilly smile at the bench opposite. "That man's testimony should be of special interest to the defense, I imagine. The esteemed Marcus Cicero himself has declared this witness to be 'the most honest man in Rome.' Wait until you hear what that fellow has to tell us about the attempts to poison this lady, Cicero! I wonder what you'll have to say then about the depraved murderer sitting beside you!"

This struck me as a clever but dangerous ploy on the part of Her-ennius, to leave a damaging revelation to his witnesses so that it could emerge as a surprise at the very end of the trial, rather than to include it in his oration, where he could shape and deliver the accusation himself The advantage was the sympathy to be stirred by a poison survivor telling her own story; the defense would be hard-pressed to anticipate and neutralize ahead of time any surprises that might emerge from such testimony. Who, I wondered, was this alleged "most honest man in Rome"? I looked at Cicero to catch his reaction and found him, oddly enough, staring straight at me.

Chapter Twenty One

I don't believe for a moment that he poisoned her," said Bethesda,

"any more than I believe that he killed the Egyptian." After three long orations, the court had adjourned early so that the defense advocates could present their responses in succession on the following day. Bethesda and I immediately headed home, where she proceeded to get ready for Clodia's party, even though nightfall was still hours away.

"But Clodia insists that he did."

"She's mistaken," Bethesda frowned at the burnished mirror she held in her hand. "This necklace will never do. Hand me the silver one."

"It can't be both ways," I said. "One of them is lying. What a pity that you have to choose between Clodia and Caelius. What a choice for anyone to have to make!"

"Right now, I am trying to choose a necklace," she said. "The silver one, please."

I searched her dresser for a silver necklace and found myself lost amid the clay jars of unguents and little glass vials of perfume. My eye caught a flash of bright red.

"What's this?"

"What?"

I picked up the little clay figure of Attis, identical to the ones I had seen in the room of Lucceius's wife and on Clodia's dresser. The smiling eunuch stood with his hands on his fat belly, with a bright red Phrygian cap on his head. Bethesda glimpsed its reflection and put down her mirror.

"You shouldn't touch that."

"Where did it come from?" "It came while we were at the trial today."

"I asked where it came from, not when." "It's a gift."

"Who sent it?"

"Who do you think?" Bethesda took the statue from me. She put it back on the dresser, then scooped up a long silver necklace and reached for her mirror. "You're hopeless. Go away and tell Diana to come help me dress."

We arrived at Clodia's door at the last moment of twilight, when the hard edges of the world begin to soften and grow hazy like the mind of a man ready for sleep. But while the world might be drowsy, the party-goers at Clodia's house were wide awake. The brightly lit dining room off her garden was alive with music and conversation. Slaves were jus beginning to show the guests to their places at the dining couches when we arrived. It was an odd mixture of impeccably dressed patricians and scruffy-looking young poets, of radical politicians and aging courtesans, of exotic-looking foreigners and even a few galli. The air was heavy with the world-weary sophistication that passes for style in Rome these days.