The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough Page A

glued together with wild thyme honey, pastry envelopes filled with raisin mince and soaked in syrup of figs, and two splendid cheeses.
    "Arpinum!" exclaimed Marius, holding up a wedge of the second cheese, his face with its preposterous eyebrows suddenly seeming years younger. "I know this cheese well! My father makes it. The milk is from two-year-old ewes, and taken only after they've grazed on the river meadow for a week, where the special milkgrass grows."
    "Oh, how nice," said Marcia, smiling at him without a trace of affectation or selfconsciousness. "I've always been fond of this particular cheese, but from now on I shall look out for it especially. The cheese made by Gaius Marius— your father is also a Gaius Marius?—of Arpinum."
    The moment the last course was cleared away the women rose to take their leave, having had no sip of wine, but dined heartily on the food and drunk deeply of the water.
    As she got up Julia smiled at him with what seemed genuine liking, Marius noted; she had made polite conversation with him whenever he initiated it, but made no attempt to turn the discourse between him and her father into a three-sided affair. Yet she hadn't looked bored, but hadfollowed what Caesar and Marius talked about with evident interest and understanding. A truly lovely girl, a peaceful girl who yet did not seem destined to turn into a pudding. Her little sister, Julilla, was a scamp—delightful, yes, but a regular handful too, suspected Marius. Spoiled and willful and fully aware of how to manipulate her family to get her own way. But there was something in her more disquieting; the assessor of young men was also a fairly shrewd assessor of young women. And Julilla caused his hackles to ripple ever so softly and slightly; somewhere in her was a defect, Marius was sure. Not exactly lack of intelligence, though she was less well read than her elder sister and her brothers, and clearly not a whit perturbed by her ignorance. Not exactly vanity, though she obviously knew and treasured her beauty. Then Marius mentally shrugged, dismissed the problem and Julilla; neither was ever going to be his concern.

    The young men lingered for perhaps ten more minutes, then they too excused themselves and departed. Night had fallen; the water clocks began to drip away the hours of darkness, twice as long as the hours of daylight. This was midwinter, and for once the calendar was in step with the seasons, thanks to the fastidiousness of the Pontifex Maximus, Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus, who felt date and season ought to coincide—quite Greek, really. What did it matter, so long as your eyes and temperature-sensing apparatus told you what season it was, and the official calendar displayed in the Forum Romanum told you what month and day it was?
    When the servants came to light the lamps, Marius noticed that the oil was of top quality, and the wicks not coarse oakum, but made from properly woven linen.
    "I'm a reader," said Caesar, following Marius's gaze and interpreting his thoughts with the same uncanny accuracy he had displayed at the outset of that chance meeting of eyes yesterday on the Capitol. "Nor, I'm afraid, do I sleep very well. Years ago now, when the children were first of an age to participate in family councils, we had a special meeting at which we decided each of us should be permitted one affordable luxury. Marcia chose to have a first-class cook, I remember—but since that directly benefited all of us, we voted that she should have a new loom, the latest model from Patavium, and always the kind of yarn she likes, even if it's expensive. Sextus chose to be able to visit the Fields of Fire behind Puteoli several times a year.''
    A look of anxiety settled momentarily upon Caesar's face; he sighed deeply. "There are certain hereditary characteristics in the Julius Caesars," he explained, "the most famous of which—aside from our fairness of coloring—is the myth that every Julia is born gifted with the