"Indeed, citizen, patience is a virtue-to a point. And mine will extend exactly as long as this damnable business with Caelius and Milo remains unresolved. After that, once things are back to normal…" He shrugged, which made his shoulders jiggle. "Eventually, obligations must be met. Order must be maintained. Property rights must be respected and loans repaid. Wise Caesar says so." He smiled and took Cytheris's much smaller hand in his and kissed it. In that instant I understood why he had agreed to make Cytheris a freedwoman at the request of the love-struck Antony. To please Caesar's lieutenant was to please Caesar. Her manumission was nothing more or less than a business decision.

"As Cytheris says, Davus and I were just leaving. Good-bye, Cytheris. Good day, Volumnius."

"And good day to you, citizen. Be wise and prosper-so that you may meet your obligations when the day of reckoning arrives."

XI

The fifth time I saw Cassandra was late in the month of Maius. Almost a month had passed since the attempted arrest of Marcus Caelius and his hairbreadth escape, but all Rome was still in an uproar.

Rumors abounded. Some said Caelius had gone off to join Caesar, but it was hard to imagine how he could do so after the insinuations he had made against Caesar in his speeches; was he so rash as to think he could win Caesar's forgiveness by charm alone? Some said that Caelius had not escaped after all but had been arrested, and was being held at a secret location while Isauricus decided what to do with him. Others said that Caelius had indeed escaped but was still in the city, hiding with a band of conspirators who were plotting to assassinate all the magistrates and most of the Senate.

Some said Caelius had gone south to set free a school of gladiators in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius, with the intention of returning to Rome and staging a massacre. Others said Caelius had gone north to try to rally various cities to his cause, hoping to win them over one by one until he felt confident of marching on Rome with an army of volunteers. From the Forum, Hieronymus reported this remark by Volcatius, leader of the Pompeian chin-waggers: "If Caelius has his way, the rabble of Rome will soon be kicking the heads of their landlords and moneylenders through the streets!"

Yet another rumor said that Caelius was planning to rendezvous with his old friend Milo, and that the two of them were going to sweep across Italy together. To my ears this was the wildest speculation of all. In his days as Cicero's protege, Caelius had indeed been friends with Milo, but in recent years their politics had drifted so far apart that it seemed impossible that the two could ever reunite in a common cause.

Before his forced departure from Rome, Titus Annius Milo had been the man upon whom the self-styled Best People relied to do their dirty business. As Clodius had ruled the street gangs on the left, so Milo had ruled the street gangs on the right. When a conservative magistrate wanted to break up a demonstration by the opposition, or needed demonstrators of his own to agitate in the Forum, Milo was the man who could produce angry crowds, bloody fists, and a few cracked skulls.

Pompey, who liked to hold himself aloof from the gritty political reality of street brawls, had looked to Milo to act as his henchman. Cicero had doted upon Milo, and saw him as his brutish alter ego; Cicero had the brains, while Milo wielded the brawn. For his efforts Milo was well rewarded by the Best People. He was admitted into their inner circle; he was a man headed for great things. With his marriage to Fausta, the daughter of the late dictator Sulla, his ascent into the highest ranks of Rome's ruling class seemed assured.

And then it all came crashing down. After a skirmish with Milo's entourage on the Appian Way a few miles outside Rome, Clodius was murdered. Milo and Fausta were at the scene, and whether Milo literally bloodied his hands or not, he was blamed for the murder of his enemy. Angry rioters burned down the Senate House and demanded Milo's head. Pompey, called upon to keep order, put Milo on trial and did nothing to help him. The Best People washed their hands of him. Loyal to the end, Cicero took on Milo's defense, but his efforts were to no avail; attempting to give his oration, he was shouted down by the mob. Accompanied by a large band of hardened gladiators, Milo fled from Rome before the guilty verdict was announced and headed for the Greek city-state of Massilia, the destination of so many Roman political exiles.

He left behind a fortune in property that was confiscated by the state, a bitterly disappointed wife who by all accounts was glad to see the last of him, and a hopelessly divided city. Looking back, it seemed to me that the murder of Clodius and the trial of Milo marked the last gasp of the dying Republic and the beginning of the end of the Roman Constitution. Certainly it had marked the end of Milo; even amid the turmoil of civil war, no one could doubt that Milo's career was over for good. When Caesar conquered Massilia, he had declared amnesty for all the Roman political exiles in the city, with the conspicuous exclusion of only one: Milo.

Abandoned by Pompey, rebuffed by Caesar, beyond the help of Cicero, Milo had become the forgotten man of Roman politics.

Now rumors were reaching the city that Milo had managed to escape from Massilia, despite the garrison of Caesar's soldiers, who had instructions to keep him there. Not only had he escaped, but he had managed to do so with the large band of gladiators who had accompanied him into exile.

Even more bizarre than these rumors was the further assertion that Milo was somehow involved in a conspiracy with Marcus Caelius. Milo's entire career had been based on pandering to the interests of the most rigidly conservative clique among the Roman elite. The idea that he would join forces with Caelius, who had made himself the champion of wholesale revolution, was ludicrous. Or was it? In such times, old friendships and bonds of trust might count for more than differing political philosophies, and men as desperate as Milo and Caelius might take whatever allies they could get. What, after all, did Milo owe to the Best People or to Pompey? In the crisis that followed Clodius's murder, they had cast him aside like a hot coal.

In my own household, all else was overshadowed by Bethesda's illness. Its prognosis and cure were as elusive as the whereabouts and future plans of Marcus Caelius. To pay for physicians, I borrowed more money from Volumnius. They examined Bethesda's tongue. They studied her stools. They poked and prodded her various parts. They prescribed this treatment and that, all of which cost money. I went further into debt. Nothing seemed to help. Bethesda had good days and bad days, but more and more often she kept to her bed.

Her symptoms were obscure. There were no sharp pains, no visible rashes, no vomiting or foul excreta. She felt weak and out of sorts-"uncomfortable in my skin," she said. She was sometimes dizzy, sometimes short of breath. She had no faith in the physicians or their treatments. When she bit one of them for pinching her tongue too hard, I told the quack he was lucky to leave my house with all his fingers, and I decided to send for no more physicians.

A household is not unlike a human body, with a head and a heart and a sense of well-being that depends on the harmony of its various parts. The disposition of my household changed from day to day, depending on Bethesda. Her bad days were bad days for everyone, full of gloom and foreboding. On her good days the household stirred with a cautious sense of hope. As time passed and bad days outnumbered good, hope receded, so that even the best days were tempered by a deep anxiety.