Caesar Dies | Page 6

enough plain dealing. The only mystery about Glyco
is how he avoids indictment for conspiracy--what with his long nose
and sly eyes, and his way of hinting that he knows enough to turn the
world upside down. If Pertinax talks mystery I will class him with the
other foxes who slink into holes when the agenda look like becoming
acta. Show me only a raised standard in an open field and I will take
my chance beside it. But I sicken of all this talk of what we might do if
only somebody had the courage to stick a dagger into Commodus."
"The men who could persuade themselves to do that, are persuaded that
a worse brute might succeed him," Sextus answered. "It is no use
killing a Commodus to find a Nero in his shoes. If the successor were
in sight --and visibly a man not a monster--there are plenty of men
brave enough to give the dagger-thrust. But the praetorian guard, that
makes and unmakes emperors, has been tasting the sweets of tyranny

ever since Marcus Aurelius died. They despise their 'Roman Hercules'
(Commodus' favorite name for himself)--who doesn't? But they grow
fat and enjoy themselves under his tyranny, so they would never
consent to leaving him unguarded, as happened to Nero, for instance, or
to replacing him with any one of the caliber of Aurelius, if such a man
could be found."
"Well, then, what do we go to talk about?" Norbanus asked.
"We go for information."
"Dea dia! (the most mysterious of all the Roman deities) We inform
ourselves that Rome has been renamed 'The City of Commodus'--that
offices are bought and sold--that there were forty consuls in a year,
each of whom paid for the office in turn--that no man's life is safe-- that
it is wiser to take a cold in the head to Galen than to kiss a mule's nose
(it was a common superstition that a cold in the head could be cured by
kissing a mule's nose)--and then what? I begin to think that Pertinax is
wiser to amuse himself with women after all!"
Sextus edged his horse a little closer to the skewbald and for more than
a minute appeared to be studying Norbanus' face, the other grinning at
him and making the stallion prance.
"Are you never serious?" asked Sextus.
"Always and forever, melancholy friend of mine! I seriously dread the
consequences of that letter that you wrote to Rome! Unlike you, I have
not much more than life to lose, but I value it all the more for being less
encumbered. Like Apollonius, I pray for few possessions and no needs!
But what I have, I treasure; I propose to live long and make use of life!"
"And I!" retorted Sextus.
With a gesture of disgust, he turned to stare behind him at the crowd on
its way to Daphne, making such a business of pleasure as reduced the
pleasure to a toil of Sisyphus (who had to roll a heavy stone perpetually
up a steep hill in the underworld. Before he reached the top the stone
always rolled down again).
"I have more than gold," said Sextus, "which it seems to me that any
crooked-minded fool may have. I have a spirit in me and a taste for
philosophies; I have a feeling that a man's life is a gift entrusted to him
by the gods--for use--to be preserved--"
"By writing foolish letters, doubtless!" said Norbanus. "Come along, let
us gallop. I am weary of the backs of all these roisterers."

And so they rode to Daphne full pelt, greatly to the anger of the too
well dressed Antiochenes, who cursed them for the mud they splashed
from wayside pools and for the dung and dust they kicked up into
plucked and penciled faces.

II. A CONFERENCE AT DAPHNE

It was not yet dusk. The sun shone on the bronze roof of the temple of
Apollo, making such a contrast to, and harmony with, marble and the
green of giant cypresses as only music can suggest. The dying breeze
stirred hardly a ripple on the winding ponds, so marble columns, trees
and statuary were reflected amid shadows of the swans in water tinted
by the colors of the sinking sun. There was a murmur of wind in the
tops of the trees and a stirring of linen-clad girls near the temple
entrance--voices droning from the near-by booths behind the
shrubbery-- one flute, like the plaint of Orpheus summoning
Eurydice--a blossom- scented air and an enfolding mystery of silence.
Pertinax, the governor of Rome, had merely hinted at Olympian desire,
whereat some rich Antiochenes, long privileged, had been ejected with
scant ceremony from a small marble pavilion on an islet, formed by a
branch of the River Ladon