Poor Caelius, I thought, Vain, ambitious, restless, quick silver Caelius! With Milo dead, every city closed to him, and no army-not even an army of field slaves-he must have known there was no hope, that he was doomed. Thurii was the end of the line, the end of the world, the final terminus in the comet like career of the young orator who had been Cicero's scintillating protege, Milo's staunch defender, Caesar's brash lieutenant, Clodia's faithless lover, and the last desperate hope of the disgruntled, dispossessed masses of Rome.

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"Well, as I heard it…" Hieronymus lowered his voice. His eyes glittered with excitement at being able to deliver the details to a virgin ear, but Davus, too agitated to hold his tongue, interrupted him.

"They cut him down!" said Davus. "When Caelius arrived at Thurii, he strode right through the open gates of the city-word hadn't yet reached them to be on their guard against him. He walked through the market, into the forum, and up the steps to the porch of the town senate building. He clapped his hands and called to a group of soldiers to go and fetch their companions because he wanted to address them. A crowd gathered. Caelius started speaking. They say his voice was too big for the little forum at Thurii. People could hear him all over the city and even outside the walls and in fishing boats out on the water. More townspeople and soldiers gathered until the little forum was packed.

"Apparently, most of the soldiers stationed at Thurii are Spaniards and Gauls from Caesar's cavalry. Caelius tried to get them excited by reminding them of all the slaughter and destruction Caesar had brought to their native lands. But the soldiers would have none of it. They refused to hear a word against Caesar. They started booing and hissing and stamping their feet, but Caelius only raised his voice. He told them that Caesar had betrayed the people of Rome, and it was only a matter of time before he would betray them as well. The soldiers pelted Caelius with stones, but he kept talking, even with blood running down his face. Finally they rushed up the steps. They tore Caelius limb from limb. He screamed at the soldiers, calling them fools and lackeys. He never stopped talking until they threw him to the ground and crushed his windpipe by stamping on his throat."

Milo's skull had been crushed. Caelius had been torn apart. What had become of their heads, which Calpurnia had so fervently desired to have brought to her? Only their heads could provide her with incontrovertible proof that the menace was over; only then could she write to Caesar with the good news without fear that her informants might be wrong. Would she gloat over those heads just a little, indulging her emotions in a manner unbecoming to a Roman matron?

"…were crucified," I heard Davus say, jarring me back to the moment.

"What?"

"The gladiators at Neapolis and the field slaves who fought with Milo: they were crucified. The gladiators were already in custody. As for the field slaves, the soldiers from the garrison at Compsa hunted them down. Some died fighting, but most of them were rounded up and crucified alongside the roadways. They say so many slaves haven't been crucified at one time since the days of Spartacus, when Crassus put down the great slave revolt and lined the whole length of the Appian Way with crucified slaves."

A silence fell over the garden. Hieronymus, sensing an opening, flashed a sardonic expression and began to say something, but I held up my hand. "I've heard enough," I said. "I want to be alone for a while. Davus, go to Diana. She's with her mother, I think. Hieronymus, I heard a commotion in the kitchen a moment ago. Androcles and Mopsus are probably behind it. Would you go and have a look?"

They departed the garden in separate directions and left me alone with my thoughts.

I was surprised at how powerfully the news affected me. Milo had been a hotheaded brute and no friend of mine. Caelius had been either a mad visionary or a crass opportunist. Did it matter which, in the end? Together they had tried to bully me into joining their cause. When I refused, they had allowed me to escape with my life-but only, so far as I could make out, because Cassandra somehow compelled them to do so. What had been her connection to the two of them? Now that Milo and Caelius were both dead, in retrospect it seemed more impossible than ever that their mad scheme could have possibly succeeded.

Cassandra had been murdered. Why? By whom?

An idea came to me. How could it not have occurred to me already? It was so obvious, yet I had somehow tricked myself into over looking it. The instant of revelation was so acute as to be palpable, almost painful, as if a spring inside my head suddenly uncoiled. I must have actually cried out, for Davus reappeared in the garden, quickly followed by Hieronymus and the boys.

"Father-in-Law," said Davus, "you're weeping!"

"I had no idea he would take the news so hard," whispered Hieronymus.

Androcles and Mopsus looked at me aghast. They had never seen me so shaken, even at Cassandra's funeral.

"Fetch my toga," I told them. "I must pay a formal visit."

"Where are you going, Father-in-Law? I'll put on my toga, too-"

"No, Davus, I shall go alone."

"Surely not on such a day," insisted Davus. "You don't know what it's like down in the Forum."

"The young man is right," said Hieronymus. "The streets aren't safe. If Caelius's supporters riot, and Isauricus calls on his own ruffians to keep order-"

"I shall go alone," I insisted. "I won't be going far."

She would not be at her horti, not on a day such as this, with so much uncertainty and the potential for violence in the city. She would be safely locked up in her house on the Palatine, only a short walk from my own. I kept to the smaller streets and saw hardly anyone afoot. Every now and then I heard echoes from the Forum-shouts of jubilation, as far as I could tell. Isauricus must have called up every partisan he could muster to make a show of celebrating the news from the south.

Her house was situated at the end of a quiet lane. In recent years the trend among the wealthy and powerful had been to erect massive, ostentatious houses that brazenly proclaimed their owners' status, but hers was a very old house and had been in her family for generations; it followed the old-fashioned custom of houses of the great patrician families by presenting an unassuming face to the street. The front was windowless and stained with a muted yellow wash. The doorstep was paved with glazed red and black tiles. The wash needed redoing, I noticed, and some of the tiles were cracked or missing. Framing the rustic oak door were two towering cypress trees. They, too, had an unkempt look; they were shot through with pockets of dead, brown foliage and masses of spider webs. Those trees were visible from the balcony at the back of my house. I never noticed them without thinking of Clodia.

I expected a handsome young man or a beautiful girl to answer the door-Clodia had always surrounded herself with beautiful things-but it was an old retainer who greeted me. He disappeared for a few moments to announce me, then returned and escorted me deeper into the house. Once it had been among the most sumptuously appointed homes in Rome, but now I saw pedestals without statues, places on the walls where paintings should have been, cold floors that lacked rugs. Like so many others in Rome whose place in the world had once seemed unshakable, Clodia had fallen on hard times.

She was in her garden, reclining on a couch beside a little fishpond, dropping bits of meal into the water and watching the fish dart about, their scales flashing in the watery sunlight. This was the garden where years ago I had attended one of her infamous parties; Catullus had declaimed a poem of passion and grief while couples made love in the shadows. Now it was silent and empty except for Clodia and her fish.