She flashed a serene smile, without the least hint of remorse. It struck me that Palla resembled a bit of poisoned cake herself.

"So you see," she said, "it's all worked out for the best, for every-one concerned."

Legally and politically, the affair of Poplicola and the poisoned cake was at an end. The court of public opinion, however, would continue to try and retry the case for years to come.

There were those who insisted that the Senate investigation had been rigged by Poplicola himself; that vital witnesses had been intimidated, driven off, even killed; that the censor was morally bankrupt, unfit for his office, and that his happy household was a sham.

Others defended Poplicola, saying that all the talk against him originated with a few morally depraved, bitter ex-senators. There were even those who argued that the episode was proof of Popli-cola's wisdom and profound sense of judgment. Upon hearing such shocking charges against his son and wife, many a man would have rushed to avenge himself on them, taking their punishment into his own hands; but Poplicola had exercised almost superhuman re-straint, called for an official inquiry, and ultimately saw his loved ones vindicated. For his patience and cool-headed perseverance, Poplicola was held up as a model of Roman sagacity, and his loyal wife, Palla, was admired as a woman who held her head high even when enduring the cruelest slanders.

As for his son, Lucius Gellius's political career advanced more or less unimpeded by the scandal. He became more active than ever in the courts and in the Senate House, and openly expressed his ambi-tion to someday be censor, following in his father's footsteps. Only rarely did his unproved crimes come back to haunt him, as on the

occasion when he sparred with Cicero in a rancorous debate and threatened to give the great orator a piece of his mind-to which Cicero replied, "Better that, Lucius Gellius, than a piece of your cake!

THE CHERRIES OF LUCULLUS

"Once a thing is done, it's done. The accomplished fact takes on an air of inevitability, no matter how uncertain it might have seemed beforehand. Do you not agree, Gordianus?" Cicero flashed a quizzical smile.

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said.

We were strolling across the Forum on a fine spring morning. Ahead of us, fluffy white clouds were heaped on the horizon beyond the Capitoline Hill, like a vast nimbus crowning the Temple of Jupiter, but in every other direction the sky was an immaculate blue. The mild, warm air carried strains of birdsong from yew trees that grew along the slope of the Palatine Hill that rose steeply to our left. We continued to stroll at a slow pace, but paused when a group of Vestals emerged from the round temple of their goddess and crossed our path, holding their chins high and wearing haughty expressions. One of them deigned to cast a glance at Cicero, and I saw him give her a faint nod. I recognized his sister-in-law Fabia; once, years ago, I had rescued her from the terrible fate that awaits any Vestal who dares to break her vow of chastity. Fabia did not appear to notice me, or else deliberately avoided meeting my gaze. So it sometimes goes with those who call on Gordianus the Finder in their time of trouble; when the trouble is over, and they no longer need me, I vanish to their eyes, as the smoke from a censer can be dispersed by a puff of air, leaving no trace to the senses.

Cicero, tired of walking, indicated that he wished to sit for a while on the stone bench beside the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. He gestured to the space beside him, but I told him I preferred to remain standing for a while.

"What's this you were saying, about inevitability?" I asked.

Cicero hummed thoughtfully. "How did the playwright Ennius put it? 'It is done now. The workings of the Fates I surmise; how could the outcome have been otherwise?'"

"Ennius was talking about the murder of Remus by Romulus, as I recall. But what in Hades are you talking about, Cicero?"

He shrugged and narrowed his eyes, as if searching his mind for an example, but I suspected the point he wished to make was already fully formed in his mind and he was simply taking his time to get around to it, wanting his words to seem spontaneous rather than re-hearsed. Cicero was a lawyer, and this is how lawyers speak; they never go straight to the point when they can practice circumlocu-tion. There was no sense in pressing him. I sighed and decided to sit down after all.

"Well, Gordianus, consider: a mere ten years ago-say, during the consulship of my good friend Lucullus-who could have foreseen with any certainty the future course of the Roman Republic? To the west, the rebel general Sertorius was luring malcontents in the Senate to Spain, with the aim of setting up a rival republic; Sertorius and his followers claimed that they represented the true Rome, and showed every intention of returning someday to claim the city as their own. Meanwhile, to the east, the war against King Mithridates had taken a turn for the worse; it was beginning to look as if Rome had bitten off more than she could chew when she invaded Mithridates's holdings in Asia Minor, and we were likely to choke on our mistake.

"And then, to compound the situation, our enemies decided to join forces against us! Sertorius sent his right-hand man, Marcus Varius, to lead Mithridates's army, and so Rome found herself embattled against Roman generals on both sides. The development was all the more unnerving because Sertorius had only one eye-as did Varius! One had lost his right eye in battle, the other his left; I can never remember which had lost which. Notwithstanding Aristotle and his disdain for coincidence, any historian will tell you that For-tune loves odd synchronisms and curious parallels-and what a curious turn of events, if Rome had been bested by two of her own generals, a pair of men who between them possessed a pair of eyes such as most men take for granted. I must confess, Gordianus, in my darker moods it seemed to me that Sertorius and Mithridates together would triumph and split the world between them; history would have taken a very different course, and Rome would be a different place today."

"But that's not what happened," I said.

"No. Sertorius, with his overbearing personality, at last became so insufferable to his own followers that they murdered him. Sertorius's one-eyed henchman Varius proved to be not such a capable general after all; in a sea battle off the island of Lemnos, Lucullus took him captive and destroyed his army. King Mithridates was bested on every front, and stripped of his most prized territories, which now pay their tribute to Rome. What's done is done, and the outcome seems to have been inevitable all along; Rome's triumph was assured from the beginning, by the grace of the gods, and it could never have been otherwise."

"You believe in destiny, then?"

"Rome believes in destiny, Gordianus, for at every stage of her history, her destiny has been manifest."

"Perhaps," I said, but doubtfully. It was in the nature of my work to poke and prod and peer beneath the surface of things, to turn back rugs, so to speak, and examine the detritus swept underneath; and from my experience, no man (and by extension, no nation) pos-sessed such a thing as a manifest destiny. Every man and nation pro-ceeded through life in fits and starts, frequently heading off in the wrong direction and then doubling back, usually making a host of catastrophic mistakes and desperately trying to cover them over be-fore moving on to make the next mistake. If the gods took any part in the process, it was generally to have a bit of sport at the expense of hapless mortals, not to light the way to some predetermined path of greatness. Only historians and politicians, blessed by keen self-interest and blurry hindsight, could look at the course of events and see the workings of divine intention.