Cicero accompanied me. He had been up this winding path many times before, but seemed happy to take his time and indulge my wide-eyed wonderment.

At last we reached the villa. A slave greeted us, told us that his master awaited us in the Apollo Room, and asked us to follow him.

I heard Cicero release a gasp and then a groan. "The Apollo Room!" he muttered under his breath.

"You know the place?" I asked, my wonderment increasing as we traversed terraces, porticoes, and galleries. Everywhere I looked, I saw bits and pieces of Asia Minor that Lucullus had brought back to adorn his Roman home. Greek statues, ornamental plaques, sculptural reliefs, carved balustrades, dazzling tiles, magnificent rugs, shimmering draperies, colorful paintings in encaustic wax, superbly crafted tables and chairs, even entire marble columns had been shipped over the sea and up the Tiber to confront Lucullus's engineers, architects, and decorators with the formidable task of creating from their disparate elements a harmonious whole. By some miracle, they had succeeded. Opulence and abundance greeted the eye at every turn; gaudiness and ostentation were nowhere to be seen.

"Lucullus entertains guests in various rooms, depending on his mood," Cicero explained. "To each room is accorded a specific budget for the meal. The simplest meals-and they could be called simple only by the standards of Lucullus-are served in the Hercules Room; the plates are of simple silver, the food is traditional Roman fare, and the wines are of a vintage only slightly beyond the means of most of us mere senators. Lucullus finds the Hercules Room suitable for a simple afternoon repast when entertaining a few intimate friends-and that's where I presumed we would be eating. But the Apollo Room! The couches are sumptuous, the silver plate is stunning, and the food is fit for the gods! The wine will be Falernian, you may be sure. No delicacy which Lucullus's cook can imagine will be denied to us. If only Lucullus had warned me, I should have avoided eating altogether for the last few days, in preparation. My poor stomach is al-ready grumbling in dread!"

For as long as I had known him, Cicero had suffered from irritable bowels. He suffered least when he maintained a simple diet, but like most successful politicians his life had become a whirlwind of meals and parties, and to refuse a host's offerings would seem churlish. "My stomach is no longer my own," he had complained to me once, groaning and clutching his belly after a particularly rich banquet.

At last we passed through a doorway into a magnificent hall. Along one wall, doors opened onto a terrace overlooking the gar-dens, with a view of the Capitoline Hill in the distance. The opposite wall was covered with a glorious painting celebrating the god Apollo and his gifts to mankind-sunlight, art, and music-with the Graces and the Muses in his retinue. At one end of the room, set in a niche, was a towering statue of the god, scantily clad and resplendent in his beauty, carved from marble but painted in such life-like colors that for the barest instant I was fooled into thinking I saw a being of flesh and blood.

The room might have accommodated scores of guests, but the gathering that day was much smaller. A group of dining couches had been pulled into a semicircle near the terrace, where the guests could enjoy the warm, jasmine-scented breeze.

We were apparently the last to arrive, for only two of the couches remained empty, those situated at either side of our host. Lucullus, reclining at the center of the semicircle, looked up at our arrival, but did not stand. He was dressed in a saffron tunic with elaborate red embroidery and a belt of silver chain; his hair, gray at the temples but still plentiful for a man of forty-six, was combed back to show his prominent forehead. Despite his reputation for high living, his complexion was clear and his waist no larger than that of most men his age.

"Cicero!" he exclaimed. "How good to see you-and just in time for the mullet course. I had them delivered from Cumae this morning, from Orata's fish farm. Cook's trying a new recipe, something about grilling them on a stick with an olive stuffing; he tells me I shall wish to die after one taste, resolved that life's pleasures can achieve no higher pinnacle."

"No matter what the pleasure, there's always another to top it," responded one of the guests. The man's features were so like those of our host that I realized he had to be Lucullus's younger brother, Marcus Licinius. They were said to be very close; indeed, Lucullus had held off running for his first office until his brother Marcus was also old enough to run, so that they could both be elected to the curule aedileship as partners; the games they had put on for the populace that year, the first to ever feature elephants in combat with bears, had become legendary. To judge by his comment, and by his clothes- a Greek chiton with an elegantly stitched border of golden thread- Marcus was as much an Epicurean as his older brother.

"Wanting to die after eating a mullet! Have you ever heard anything so absurd?" This comment, followed by a laugh to soften its harshness, came from the guest seated opposite Marcus, whom 1 recognized at once: Cato, one of the most powerful senators in Rome. Cato was anything but an Epicurean; he was a Stoic, known for expounding old-fashioned virtues of frugality, restraint, and service to the state. His hair was closely cropped and he wore a simple white tunic. Despite their philosophical differences, he and Lucullus had become staunch political allies, firm friends, and-with Lucullus's marriage the previous year to Cato's half-sister, Servilia-brothers-in-law.

Reclining next to Cato was Servilia herself. To judge by the ostentation of her red gown, silver jewelry, and elaborately coiffed hair, she shared her husband's Epicurean tastes rather than her brother's Stoic values. Her tinted cheeks and painted lips were not to my taste, but she projected a kind of ripe sensuality that many men would have found attractive. Her generous figure made it hard to be certain, but it looked to me that she was just beginning to show signs of carrying a child. Servilia was Lucullus's second wife; he had divorced the first, one of the Clodia sisters, for flagrant infidelity.

The three other guests were the Greek companions of Lucullus whom Cicero had previously mentioned to me. The poet Archias was perhaps ten years older than his patron, a small man with a neatly trimmed white beard. Antiochus the philosopher was the most corpulent person in the room, with several chins obscuring his neck. The sculptor Arcesislaus was the youngest of us, a strikingly handsome and exceedingly muscular fellow; he looked quite capable of wielding a hammer and chisel and moving heavy blocks of mar-ble. I realized that it must be his Apollo in the niche at the end of the room, for the face of the god was uncannily like a self-portrait; it was likely that he had painted the wall as well, which gave the same face to Apollo. Clearly, Arcesislaus was an artist of immense talent.

I felt an unaccustomed quiver of discomfort. After years of deal-ing with Rome's elite, often seeing them at their weakest or worst, I seldom felt self-conscious in any company, no matter how exalted. But here, in the company of Lucullus's brilliant inner circle, in a setting so overwhelmingly opulent yet so impeccably refined, I felt decidedly out of my depth.

Cicero introduced me. Most of the guests had some knowledge of me; their not-unfriendly nods at the mention of my name reassured me, if only a little. Lucullus indicated that Cicero should take the couch to his right and that I should recline to his left.

The meal was spectacular-grilled eel, succulent venison, roasted fowl, and a wide variety of spring vegetables with delicate sauces, all washed down with the finest Falernian. As more wine flowed, the conversation grew more relaxed, punctuated by peals of laughter. The members of Lucullus's circle were completely at ease with one an-other, so much so that they seemed to speak a sort of secret language, full of veiled references and coded innuendoes. I felt very much an outsider, with little to contribute; mostly I listened and observed.