Caesar Dies | Page 5

fugitive from what our
'Roman Hercules' calls justice," Norbanus answered with a gesture of
irritation. His own trick of finishing people's sentences did not annoy
Sextus nearly as much as Sextus's trick of pounding on inaccuracies
irritated him. He pressed his horse into a canter and for a while they
rode beside the stream called the "Donkey-drowner" without further
conversation, each man striving to subdue the ill-temper that was on the
verge of outbreak.
Romans of the old school valued inner calm as highly as they did the
outer semblances of dignity; even the more modern Romans imitated
that distinctive attitude, pretending to Augustan calmness that had
actually ceased to be a part of public life. But with Sextus and

Norbanus the inner struggle to be self-controlled was genuine; they
bridled irritation in the same way that they forced their horses to obey
them-- captains of their own souls, as it were, and scornful of
changefulness.
Sextus, being the only son of a great landowner, and raised in the
traditions of a secluded valley fifty leagues away from Rome, was
almost half a priest by privilege of ancestry. He had been educated in
the local priestly college, had himself performed the daily sacrifices
that tradition imposed on the heads of families and, in his father's
frequent absence, had attended to all the details and responsibilities of
managing a large estate. The gods of wood and stream and dale were
very real to him. The daily offering, from each meal, to the manes of
his ancestors, whose images in wax and wood and marble were
preserved in the little chapel attached to the old brick homestead, had
inspired in him a feeling that the past was forever present and a man's
thoughts were as important as his deeds.
Norbanus, on the other hand, a younger son of a man less amply
dowered with wealth and traditional authority, had other reasons for
adopting, rather than inheriting, an attitude toward life not dissimilar
from that of Sextus. Gods of wood and stream to him meant very little,
and he had not family estates to hold him to the ancient views. To him
the future was more real than the past, which he regarded as a state of
ignorance from which the world was tediously struggling. But
inherently he loved life's decencies, although he mocked their
sentimental imitations; and he followed Sextus--squandered hours with
him, neglecting his own interests (which after all were nothing too
important and were well enough looked after by a Syracusan slave),
simply because Sextus was a manly sort of fellow whose friendship
stirred in him emotions that he felt were satisfying. He was a born
follower. His ugly face and rather mirth-provoking blue eyes, the loose,
beautifully balanced seat on horseback and the cavalry-like carriage of
his shoulders, served their notice to the world at large that he would
stick to friends of his own choosing and for purely personal reasons, in
spite of, and in the teeth of anything.
"As I said," remarked Sextus, "if Pertinax comes--"
"He will show us how foolish a soldier can be in the arms of a woman,"
Norbanus remarked, laughing again, glad the long silence was broken.

"Orcus (the messenger of Dis, who carried dead souls to the
underworld. The masked slaves who dragged dead gladiators out of the
arena were disguised to represent Orcus) take his women! What I was
going to say was, we shall learn from him the real news from Rome."
"All the names of the popular dancers!"
"And if Galen is there we shall learn--"
"About Commodus' health. That is more to the point. Now if we could
get into Galen's chest of medicines and substitute--"
"Galen is an honest doctor," Sextus interrupted. "If Galen is there we
will find out what the philosophers are discussing in Rome when spies
aren't listening. Pertinax dresses himself like a strutting peacock and
pretends that women and money are his only interests, but what the
wise ones said yesterday, Pertinax does today; and what they say today,
he will do tomorrow. He can look more like a popinjay and act more
like a man than any one in Rome."
"Who cares how they behave in Rome? The city has gone mad,"
Norbanus answered. "Nowadays the best a man can do is to preserve
his own goods and his own health. Ride to a conference do we? Well,
nothing but words will come of it, and words are dangerous. I like my
danger tangible and in the open where it can be faced. Three times last
week I was approached by Glyco--you remember him?--that son of
Cocles and the Jewess--asking me to join a secret mystery of which he
claims to be the unextinguishable lamp. But there are too many
mysteries and not